Colleen’s Blog

There’s a disconnect between the future of sales and the current popularity of two-tiered sales structures that include sales development reps (SDRs) combined with field reps. I touched on it in this article: let’s now explore that point in more depth.

I've been working with executives for the last few years on sales coaching practices. I've noticed that many executives are on the fence about whether or not to coach top performers. Let me clear the air.

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.

There’s one thing I’ve noticed with organizations and people who are really good at bringing new business: they are good at operationalizing value. These organizations and people have closing ratios higher than the average: 40% to 45%, as opposed to the average of 25% to 30%.

   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.

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.

This is the hidden secret behind high sales performance. If you follow my content, or any other sales thought leader's work, you'll find a plethora of great strategies, practices, and ideas that you can apply in your business. Yet, one idea, in particular, seems to always get neglected.