Colleen’s Blog

In earlier times—let’s call it 2018—it was common for sellers to be exclusively in control of their sales pipeline. They built it and moved prospects through it based only on inputs that mattered to their organization. However, just because those seller-focused pipelines were popular didn’t mean they were effective!

The most successful organizations I work with right now are nimble. That means they are quick to conduct meetings and action important ideas. If you want to successfully come out of the economic crisis, you have to embrace nimbleness.

Is your sales team taking the time to truly understand your customer?

A client of mine recently emailed me and mentioned that they lost two of their biggest clients.

As a seller, each day you have a set of tasks that need to be completed. Don't put off your "must-dos."

Decision paralysis is a real thing. It's when your buyers are so overwhelmed with information that they can't make a decision. Best case, they simply delay. Worst case, they cancel the project, spend their money on something else, or they just go with the incumbent. Neither of those options are good for any of us, especially when you're the incumbent.

Want to know my favorite sales question? It's powerful, versatile, and helps you become a better sales leader.

All value-based selling—when done effectively—is about correctly defining the benefits of your product or service based on what matters to your customer. As I like to regularly remind sellers and leaders: the only value that matters is what matters to the client. The better you are at defining this, the better you become at building a broad array of connections that improve your closing ratio.

When sales leaders think about their sales teams and the success they're creating, they often think about, well, their sales!

The big mistake repeated far too often by sellers throughout the global pandemic—and in any period of abrupt change—is believing that if you wait long enough and keep on working the way you always have, things will eventually get back to normal.