Colleen’s Blog

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what makes a successful salesperson and I realize that one of the key components of all the top performers that I talk to is resilience. They are absolutely committed to keep going even in the face of adversity.

One of the things that I’ve noticed that really holds salespeople back is their inability to ask for the sale. Well, I shouldn’t say "inability" because everybody is able to ask for the sale, many of us are just not willing to. We fear rejection. You can be a great prospector and a great negotiator and you can handle all the objections, ask all the right questions but if you never ask for the sale, then you’re never going to get the sale.

What are you doing to shorten the time between when you get someone to say yes and when the order actually comes in?

It was a gorgeous day in San Francisco today and another busy day at Dreamforce! I spent the day with Adobe in the Adobe Sign Signature Lounge shooting video and talking to people about the future of sales.  You can check out my Facebook live interview with Joe from Adobe here. The message about community obviously resonated with people as it's had over 1.5k views today. We started our conversation about creating customer experiences. I believe that customers and employees want to experience a community. Dreamforce is an example of a customer experience community that we should all strive to emulate. Dreamforce is a community where:

I'm live at the largest tech show in the world this week. That can only mean it's Dreamforce! With 160,000 registered attendees all working in or in support of sales, Dreamforce is not only the largest tech gathering but the largest sales support gathering in the world. The main themes this year are Be Your Best and Be a Trailblazer. Here is what that means to me:

This month I spent a day working with a group of world-class data visualization architects. Who even knew there was such a profession! Nor that the best in the world were based in Toronto. Ironically, being Canadian, I have very little business in our nation’s business capital so it was doubly nice to be working with such a smart group so close to home. The learning environment you choose for your events can either be attractive and inspiring, or depressing and repellant. An attractive environment puts everyone at ease, sparks conversation, and creativity. It’s simply more difficult to be closed minded and cranky in a gorgeous environment. Today’s meeting space at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club on Toronto Island was one of the top spaces I have worked in. Lots of natural light, a view of the lake, high-class furnishings, a building steeped in tradition, well-dressed attendees, and of course, away from their offices. The environment definitely made a difference in the culture of the workshop. While we can’t always have meetings at locations such as the RCYC, we can create the best environments for our attendees to learn and communicate. I notice that the best workshop environments (gauged from participant engagement and implementation) include:

I have been spending a lot of time in workshops so far this year and the number one thing sales reps ask me is how you move beyond the pricing objection and here is what I’m discovering.

I'm not ready to stop sharing the Wells Fargo fiasco and what it means for us as professional sellers. Today, we are hearing about sales targets. The average American has 3 accounts at their bank. Wells Fargo decided to set 8 accounts per person as their target. Why 8?

Smaller businesses sometimes don’t have the resources to dramatically increase the size of their sales teams in order to drive more revenue at an accelerated pace. So here is my tip for you.

Let's call a spade a spade. What Wells Fargo did was illegal. They used private customer information to create bogus accounts, forged signatures and authorized charges that customers were not made aware of.  I, for one, am sick of the media and the banks pussy-footing around with their language describing what happened. "Even U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew weighed in on the Wells Fargo scandal, calling it a "wake-up call." "This is unacceptable behavior -- and it's the kind of behavior we need to be able to catch and stop," Lew said on Tuesday at the Delivering Alpha conference in New York." No Lew, it's not unacceptable.  It's illegal. The fines and firings are a good first step, but shouldn't someone be charged with forgery? You stop it by showing the bank that you are not afraid to press charges. Allowing the VP who oversaw the division that committed fraud to 2,000,000 customers to retire quietly with $125 million is not the right message to send.