Colleen’s Blog

Sitting in on sales coaching calls is one of the most thrilling aspects of my work. This is because I get to see in real-time what really informs the organization.

It’s a friction point that holds you back from achieving sales success: buyer objections. If left unchecked, those objections will stop you dead in your tracks from being able to present a compelling proposal to your prospective customer. And that puts you at risk of landing fewer deals. The more objections a buyer has, the more likely it is you have a fact-finding mission on your hands.

In this week’s Sales Leader, I explore the importance of being aware and prepared for sales calls.

Over the next four weeks, we will be sharing special content that’s specific to the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, we will be exploring strategies that you can implement as sellers and sales leaders in order to: 1. Position yourself well for recovery 2. Take advantage of what you can during this crisis. 

Have you ever thought of debriefing your sales calls—the good, bad, or mediocre ones? It’s a great practice to get into.

We recently experienced great success with our sales training programs. The customers involved received up to 200 to 400 percent return on investment just a few short months after the program was implemented—not after a year or multiple years, but indeed just a few short months.

When we're making a sale, we're asking someone to make a change—a change in business, strategy, software, people, or products. However, more importantly, change is difficult. If you start thinking about selling as managing a change management process, it really helps you to speed up sales and set yourself apart from the competition. Why? Because your buyers, indeed, don't like change. They're scared of change and making the wrong decision.

Whether it's a prospect or a client you've been doing business with for years, you need to over-communicate, not under-communicate. Far too many sellers believe that no news is good news. If they have a problem they are trying to resolve and have not resolved it, they just won't call their customers. This stems from the fear that the customer will either not like their progress or response. Thus, these sellers hide and under-communicate.

Years ago, I had a client based in Northern Europe and they were a ships services company. Their sales VP told me, "Colleen, we have a long and proud history of losing all the RFPs where we have the incumbent relationship." I had to think twice for a second and did not know what he was talking about.