Colleen’s Blog

After a week of touring ancient cities on the Rhine including visiting a good selection of castles, fortresses and churches, I discovered that I most enjoy them! They offer a complete glimpse into the way entire towns lived, the ways families came together and went about their daily lives, and how they protected their lives. One thing that came as a surprise was this: All castles have a single weak spot. There was only one penetrable opening in the castle that put the inhabitants at risk of enemy takeover. And, it’s the one spot with direct and open access to the ground below. Any guesses where it is? The toilet! Because the toilet was a simple hole in the floor with direct access to the outside, usually on the second floor and located over a hill, it created a vulnerable spot for the fortress. For this reason, the toilet only locked on the outside so you could escape quickly and lock the enemy out, and, was located in a highly trafficked room such as a dining hall so that if the enemy came up, there were lots of knights waiting to attack them! As I was learning about all the attempted attacks on the Marksburg Castle (the most well-restored castle on the Rhine), I got to thinking about sales teams. It struck me that all sales teams have a weak spot too. And while all teams might not have the exact same weak spot, identifying yours is the key to accelerating performance. In my experience, a sales team weak spot falls into 1 of 5 categories:

You've heard the saying variety is the spice of life before. So, just like many other things in life, keep the word variety in mind when it comes to your sales if you want see greater results. If you’re only using one or two pipeline streams to create more success with your prospecting, you are likely either currently experiencing or will experience less than impressive sales results. Why? Because the goal of efficient salespeople is to fill their sales funnels with the right prospects using multiple pipeline streams. In today’s market, your buyers have access to information anywhere, anytime and on any form of media they desire. In fact, they are often gathering information about you in places you would rather they avoid, especially if you have little to no presence in those spaces. Therefore, you must be ubiquitous! It’s critical that you retain control of all pieces of information about you and your business by embracing all forms of prospecting tools and media. You need to continue using the traditional and direct prospecting tools that you’re used to but you must also begin using indirect tools such as social media and publishing to your advantage. By doing so, you also expand your presence in the market.

Did you just do a double take? Stop trying to close sales...isn't that counter-productive to our sales success? You heard me right. Salespeople should not be attempting to “close” sales with clients. It’s all in the definition. Closing is something you do to a person. While it may just be a term, the language is completely one-sided. It implies that you are going entirely for the win regardless of what’s right for the customer. Salespeople who approach prospects with this kind of self benefiting mentality are almost never successful in their long term endeavors. Depending on their abilities and experience, they may in fact convince the prospect to do business with them, but long term, mutually beneficial relationships are rarely ever fostered. This breed of selling creates the "pushy" and "aggressive" stigma that clouds our entire industry. It puts everyone, including well-wishing, value focused salespeople at a clear disadvantage with prospects. You want to instill a win-win mindset in your team. Your business hasn't truly won unless your clients are gaining incredible value by working with you. Sales closing techniques that have amusing terms or names are often methods that you should not be using. For example:

You’ve probably had to deal with professional criticism at some point (or often) in your sales career. In such a fast-paced, high-pressure profession that is continuously focused on results, we are often subject to our fair share of criticism from colleagues, managers, clients, and prospects. If you want to be successful in sales, you must learn to take criticism and use it to your advantage. ← Click To Tweet It’s easy to get wrapped up in your faults when others are pointing them out to you. But, there are steps you can take to efficiently move past the negativity and actually create success through the criticism that you receive.