Colleen’s Blog

In this week’s Sales Leader, I examine the difference between an objection and a heckle. 

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. 

A client once reported to me that the work we did with them last year is creating 35% more revenue to the company than it did in previous years. Now that's an exceptional result, but rather than just giving myself a pat on the back, I just hired him to sit down and dissect what we did for them so that I could let you know how to get the same results. I realized it was three basic things.

I have been coaching salespeople on negotiation strategies for over 20 years. And I’ve found sellers consistently make one mistake: they jump too quickly to lower their price even if they're getting something in return.

Silence is one of the simplest things a seller can learn to do, but it is the most difficult for them to execute in the sales process effectively.

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

A large number of my clients this year are looking to grow and retain their existing account base. They want to grow and retain those existing accounts at the highest level possible in their marketplace to better serve them and provide more value.

I was working with a group of sales managers at a workshop a few weeks ago and one of them introduced this strategy. It was a very simple strategy of implementing an account plan when you didn’t have a sophisticated account planning process.

   I’ve been working with organizations to help them understand what their internal best practices are for selling and what behaviours are really driving top performance. And one of the central themes being noted by top performers across multiple organizations is team selling.

A few weeks ago, I was facilitating a group of top performers. This is a group of sellers who single-handedly help the company meet their goals. It's wonderful to work in an environment that has so many top minds.