Colleen’s Blog

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.

Far too many sales organizations focus only on the internal KPIs (the things that drive your performance): sales velocity, sales process, your funnel, your pipeline, the number of calls you make, the number of conversions you make, your closing ratio, or your average sales cycle. 

We're a couple of months into the year and maybe you're behind. Maybe January and February didn't start out as strongly as you would like. It's not the end of the world. In fact, being behind the first quarter of the year is probably the best time to be behind. However, more importantly, you have to do something about it.

The very best reps I know own their territories as if it were their own business. They plan for success in those territories proactively, rather than just taking whatever comes their way, crossing their fingers, and hoping for success.

I want to highlight a sales strategy I’ve noticed perform incredibly well as of late. We started calling this the “land and expand” strategy.

   Here’s an idea for all of you planning your sales kickoffs or big sales meetings with all of your team present: rather than just having a number of outsiders come in and talk about their motivational, sales, or consulting principles, have somebody come in and interview your top performers.

Last week, we talked about proposal formats. Therefore, it makes sense that we talk about presentation formats this week.

In a previous video, we talked about the concept of learning by doing instead of learning through a training workshop or a facilitated training event. I was recently at an extended leadership team meeting for one of my best clients and he had all of his sales managers there. We introduced a quick concept to them around proper account planning and management.

The world is run by people who follow up, and for sellers, that means being persistent.  You will win more business by being persistent than anything else. 

,So I work with a lot of companies who aren’t big enough to have both a sales team and a marketing team. And you know what? That’s okay because especially in today’s selling environment, the very best sales people are also really strong marketers.