Colleen’s Blog

The best leaders are proactive. They create policies, plans, and action before they need to. The NFL has failed in this regard. While I applaud the work they are doing now to deal with future cases of domestic violence, one gets the sense they are only doing the right thing because of public outcry and fear of sponsorship loss.

How often do you track your growth accounts? In order to be successful with your growth clients, you should be tracking them on a regular basis. More specifically, you should update yourself on their progress on a monthly basis. This may seem counterintuitive, especially because I recommend tracking key accounts on a quarterly basis. But, there are four big reasons that I suggest tracking your growth accounts more frequently.

Not all clients are created equal. Nor should you be compelled to treat them equally. There’s no law stating you must sell to everyone, or keep servicing clients that are the wrong fit for your business. It’s as fair to say that your business has outgrown some types of customers as it is to say that you have some customers that you should have never brought on in the first place. You know who they are! If you’re miserable working with a client that you know isn’t profitable for your company, you won’t be motivated to serve them well. And, if that client isn’t receiving the best treatment, they won’t hit their desired goals. By virtue of this predicament, you’ve created a lose-lose situation: You’re not helping the client reach their objectives and they’re not helping you reach yours. Besides the ones that are clearly not profitable for you, here are four other types of clients that must go immediately:

“How do I build the perfect sales cycle or the perfect sales process?” If you find yourself asking this question, you may be in for a dissapointment when you hear my answer. I’m often asked questions like this and while I wish I could provide better news, there’s no such thing as the perfect sales process. You simply can’t build or replicate a perfect system to unleash on your entire market and be guaranteed success. The truth is, the best advice for a salesperson who wants to create the “perfect” sales process is to simply make their processes more flexible. ← Click To Tweet As you know, every sale is different. Every client has their own needs and desires and each product has their own features and benefits. Because of this, there is no static sales process that can be used to accommodate the plethora of different requirements in your market. However, there are steps you can take to increase your chances for success with your sales processes:

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to sell to everyone that comes into your pipeline. I know, it’s intuitive as a salesperson to sell as much as possible, but effective salespeople know how to pick and choose which prospects to sell to. They know the good from the bad. The reality is, not every prospect is an ideal candidate for your product or service. The sooner you learn this important lesson, the sooner you can focus on the prospects that are ideal candidates for you to work with. By selling to anyone and everyone, you are setting yourself up for huge customer service problems in the future. ← Click To Tweet

Do you ever feel as though you're not doing quite enough for your client? You've delivered everything that you promised to deliver, and the client seems to be happy with the services and products you have provided them. Still, you just can't shake this feeling that not enough is being offered to them by you and your team. It's quite a natural feeling. In a world where client retention is such an important metric in the success of your business, it's completely normal to feel a little bit uneasy about where you stand with your clients. Even if they haven't been given any reason to feel on edge, many sales leaders and business owners struggle with the possibility that they may not be providing enough value for their clients. Is there a solution? Of course there is!