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Sales Expert and Member of the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame
Ottawa, Canada
In this My Quest for the Best podcast episode, Colleen Francis talks to Bill Ringle about sales, leadership, and what sales reps need to do in order to get out of the purchasing office and into that higher level of relationship with their clients.
Listen to this interview to learn:
* How she decided to leave a successful career to start her business
* The shipping company case study, where small spot sales were converted to larger, more frequent sales
* What hurdles companies need to clear in order to approach sales with greater effectiveness
* A practical tip for helping salespeople move outside their comfort zone
* The importance of dispelling the myth that selling is an innate skill, so your business can grow
[thrive_accordion_group title="Interview Insights"][thrive_accordion title="Click to Read the Show Notes" no="1/1" default="no"]
1:05 [How Francis was recruited into sales right out of university] - “I’ve always had a career in sales.”
2:05 [On why companies hired her to help with growth] - “A lot of companies, especially smaller companies, had hired me as a sales VP way too soon. We didn’t have a product yet. we didn’t really have a market yet.”
3:24 How Francis decided to leave a successful career to start her own consulting business.
4:00 “The good news about setting up a consulting business is that it’s not an infrastructure heavy business.”
4:25 “I didn’t feel comfortable, or neither did I feel like it was ethical for me to be searching for clients while I always working for another job.”
5:43 [On Francis’s ideal client] - “We love to work with organizations that have sales teams. Typically we work with organization in the mid to large size…in a B2B environment.”
7:38 “I’m not interested in working with companies that have a hit and run attitude.”
8:47 “If you spend a lot of time at the front end of that sales cycle developing that relationship, then that customer’s going to stay with you a lot longer.”
9:45 The shipping company case study, where small spot sales were converted to larger, more frequent sales.
11:05 “The most important thing there was getting their sales reps out of the purchasing office and into that higher level relationship.”
12:34 [On the evolution of sales] - “We had to start talking in terms of the benefits that these big programs had, and the results that they were going to give.”
