Colleen Stanley
Do Prospects Trust Your Salespeople?
[embedded content] HubSpot research shows that only 3% of buyers trust sales reps. That should sound BIG alarm bells in sales organizations. Trust is the foundation of relationships and without it, salespeople will run into problems opening sales conve...
How Influential Are You as a Sales Manager?
[embedded content] Influence is described as the capacity to have an effect on the character, development or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. It’s what great sales managers do. The best sales managers influence their salespeople ...
Is it Time to “Argo” Your Sales Team?
“Argo” is the 2012 movie about a high-stakes rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis. Ben Affleck stars as CIA operative Tony Mendez, who is charged with getting these diplomats out of the country safely. They do ...
How Good Is Your Sales Organization At Failing?
[embedded content] We’ve all heard the phrase, “You learn more from your failures than your successes.” But often, sales organizations aren’t walking the talk. I see a lot of different offices in my line of work. And I see a lot offices with success wa...
Are You Asking This Powerful Coaching Question?
[embedded content] One of my sales managers, Cindy, was straddling that fine line of giving her salesperson support while raising his level of sales expertise and self-awareness. The salesperson had just lost three consecutive deals, and was experienci...
Ghosting, Texting and Conflict Management: The New Sales Management Challenge
[embedded content] I was catching up with one of my oldest friends and the conversation moved from business to personal. She shared that her husband, a business owner, was frustrated with the number of candidates that were ghosting interviews. She also...
The No. 1 Way Your Salespeople REALLY Demonstrate Expertise
[embedded content] I was working with a client on improving his qualification process. He’d already attended our Ei Selling® boot camp. Now, we were taking an even deeper dive into creating customized questions for each buying influence and industry. &...
Five Ways to Improve Your Group Sales Meetings
The next time you conduct a sales meeting with your team, write down the cost of holding it. Be sure to include the payroll costs AND the conversations not occurring with prospects and clients. Take a look at the final number and ask yourself: Is…
Why Is Listening So Hard For Sales Professionals?
[embedded content] We’ve all heard the phrase, “God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.” The inference is that we should all listen more and talk less. This isn’t a new revelation or even close to thought leadership. However, listening ...
Effective Sales Management Is Emotion Management
[embedded content] You’ve hired a good salesperson but the reality is you’ve also hired a human being. And even really good human beings bring faults and blind spots that will need to be addressed. (Anyone reading this married, in a serious relationshi...
How Much are Objections Costing Your Sales Organization?
[embedded content] Meet Eddie. He is the sales elephant in the room. He represents the unspoken objections, the ones salespeople dread bringing up or avoid all together for fear that such a discussion will kill the deal. As a result of this false belie...
Is Your Sales Team More Committed to Success Than Your Prospects?
[embedded content] Jill is one of those great salespeople you wish you could duplicate. She works hard, has a great attitude, does what she says she’s going to do and delivers high value for customers. But sometimes, these great attributes become an Ac...
Will You be Replaced By a Sales Robot?
The robots are coming, the robots are coming. And with that, the new movie version of “Death of A Salesman or Saleswoman.” Not so fast. AI is here to stay and, in many ways, will help salespeople spend time on what they really like to…
What Key Performance Metrics Should Sales Managers be Held Accountable to?
[embedded content] I recently attended a sales conference where CEOs, vice presidents of sales and other sales speakers spoke about such great topics as sales enablement, sales compensation and my topic, building high-performance sales teams. A p...
The Soft Skills and Hard Skills Needed For Effective Sales Negotiations
Your salesperson, Caroline, has done a great job of opening a large opportunity. The sales conversations with the prospect have been thoughtful and insightful. The deal is at recommendation stage and the prospect puts on his professional buying hat and...
How Emotionally Intelligent Sales Managers Lead Their Teams Through Change
“If progress is impossible without change, those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw “We don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” – Gail Sheehy When I speak to CEOs and sal...
Fear – the No. 1 Emotion That Stops Sales Success
[embedded content] Sales managers have a number of roles to fulfill. One is sales coaching, which kind of like playing sales doctor, trying to properly diagnose the root cause for poor sales performance. There are a number of places to examine during c...
What Should You Look For When Conducting a Win-Loss Analysis?
“Insanity is repeating the same behaviors and expecting different results.” How many sales organizations are headed down the path of insanity because they aren’t taking the time to conduct a formal or informal win-loss analysis? The answer: too many!&n...
Two Valuable Sales Lessons from Non-Sales Trainers
I just attended the National Speakers Association industry conference. Like our clients, we enjoy learning and exploring new ways to improve and add value. Some of the sharpest people in the industry, experts on topics from innovation to customer servi...
Necessary Sales Endings – Which Salespeople Should Exit Your Sales Bus?
[embedded content] We’re almost halfway through 2018, a good time to evaluate what’s working or not working in your sales organization. One of the first things to evaluate are the performances of your sales team members. CEO’s and sales managers: ...