Colleen’s Blog

Today, we're going to focus on closing. This is the most often missed part of the sales cycle and it's critical that you ask for the sale to close.

Last week, we talked about persistence and I walked you through a call and email plan that’s designed to get somebody on the phone. There’s one other element of persistence that’s really important as you’re following up with an account and that is to be persistent with multiple people.

Recently, I was pulled aside at a sales meeting by a couple of sales reps who said, “This is all great, Colleen, but my manager won’t coach us.  He won’t take the time to help us develop our skills. What should I do?  I mean I can’t get better because I can’t be coached.”

Mike Tyson once said, you know, everybody has a set plan they're going to use until they step in the ring and they get punched in the face. It may be a strange reference when talking about sales but it's more applicable than you think. We get punched in the face proverbially of course with every sale call we make, meaning a question comes in from left field that we weren’t prepared for, the prospect or the customer says something that we weren’t prepared for and being unprepared is a terrible mistake to make in sales.

I’ve noticed something about sales managers, companies and even salespeople. They tend to overcomplicate the selling process. Could members of your sales team be falling victim to this trap? There are only four things that you need to do in every single sales process, so keep it simple.

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:

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 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?

We're now well into Q2. Are you ready to help your team accelerate their success? I’ve been working with organizations and helping transform their sales teams for the last year. In all cases, these are companies looking to grow faster than the market and at an accelerated pace than their current growth path. Here are their keys to success: