Colleen’s Blog

I was recently talking to a sales rep who told me he had not taken a vacation in 5 years. I could tell by the tone of his voice that he saw it as a badge of honor and was bragging about it. I stopped him and told him that it's not a badge of honor to never take some time off. In fact, it's a sign that you are highly inefficient if you feel you can't go away for a few days—let alone a few weeks—and have everything fall out from underneath you. It's also a sign of a really unhealthy ego if you think that your business and your client will fall apart if you go away. You believe that you are the only thing that is holding the territory together. Stop it.

You may have noticed this interesting trend... Lost deals tend to be the same ones that stagnate during the proposal phase.

How can you ensure that you’re hiring the right people to join your sales team? Many sales leaders have been asking me how to hire new sales reps and build a profitable team. I often suggest taking a step back before conducting interviews and hiring a new team member. There are a few things you need to do before you proceed with interviews in order to ensure that you hire the right person and create the best team possible.

This week, I had the pleasure of addressing 400 top Financial Services professionals at a national sales conference in Las Vegas. In fact, the image embedded to this blog post is the "backstage" view I had before the audience starting piling into the room. Here are the top 10 points from my keynote, they're the strategies that work today:

You may have noticed an interesting trend that has recently picked up steam. Buyers are looking less for experts (this is not an excuse to NOT be an expert, by the way) and they're increasingly looking for peers. They want someone is equal to them and at the same level as them, even if they hold different titles from the person they're buying from. Here are two important steps you need to consider if you want to be perceived as a peer and build trust with your customers:

Haven't I said this before? Today I attended the Salesforce for Sales keynote. Thanks to the Sales Cloud team, Tim Clarke specifically for the great VIP Seating. I have to admit, I sometimes fall into that grizzled, jaded, old sales vet mode, and think, "come on! Do we really need all this new fanged technology to sell?" The answer is no. Unless, of course, you want to sell more in less time with greater ease and with more profit. In that case, the answer is absolutely yes! Teams need to be equipped with mobile technology, and a fully functioning CRM. <--- Click to Tweet I would also encourage you to consider the following technologies that are proven to increase conversion rates:

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.

It's been an exciting weekend at the Olympic track this week and no one better displays the Olympic spirit than the two middle distance runners Mo Farah from Great Britain (Gold medal men's 10,000 meters) and Ethiopia's 3000 metre steeplechaser, Entensh Diro. In a true to life Chariots of Fire moment, Farah went down hard  half-way through his race, picked himself back up and went on to win. The last 2 laps are some of the best racing I have ever seen and (disclaimer, Farah is a track idol of mine) it's no surprise I was yelling at the TV.