Colleen Francis
Founder and President Engage Selling Solutions
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Ottawa, Canada/Miami
Colleen Francis
Biography
Colleen is driven by a passion for sales – and results. A successful sales leader for over 20 years, she understands the particular challenges of selling in today’s competitive market, and that business leaders can no longer rely on approaches to sales based on techniques from decades ago—or even last year.
Whether maximizing revenue from sales teams or seizing new market opportunities, Colleen works with businesses to develop the right sales strategies for success and delivers practical approaches to ensure it sticks. Colleen’s results have attracted clients such as Chevron, John Deere, NCR, Trend Micro, Merck, Abbott, Experian, Royal Bank, Mosaic, Dow, and hundreds of other industry-leading companies.
Time and time again, clients who work with Colleen note her frank, no-nonsense approach to accelerate sales while reducing effort and increasing profits. Colleen’s practical strategies deliver immediate and lasting results.
Colleen is an award-winning writer, consultant and bestselling author of popular sales books including the recent Right on the Money. A recognized thought leader in sales leadership, she is an inductee in the Professional Speaker Hall of Fame and has been named the #1 sales influencer to follow by LinkedIn.
Colleen Francis
Featured Videos
Current: The Sales Leader
Time 04:19
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Colleen Francis
Featured Keynote Programs
Right on the Money
Your Best Opportunity for Success is Right in Front of You
Your current accounts are your most lucrative source of additional revenue. Working more with them is the easiest way to accelerate past your sales goals. They are your biggest asset and from where you are standing right now, you are right on this money.
Sadly, these current accounts are most often a neglected profit center. All too often, companies practice Account Complacency rather than Account Management. Turning their attention, their marketing and their resources to the exciting next new deal.
My research shows that the fastest growing companies understand precisely how to manage their best accounts by focusing on customer success to profitably retain and grow their current client base. Right on the Money is rich with client examples on how leverage your best asset including cases that illustrate:
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Why clients don’t want partners, they want insiders,
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How to identify your sales prevention department and ensure they don’t get in the way of profits,
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How to sell like an insider, and
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How to develop an early-warning system to spot early defection risks and prevent them from happening
Creating a Nonstop Sales Boom
Putting an End to Boom and Bust Sales Cycles
How many times have you come off a great month or quarter, only to find that the pipeline is woefully empty and now everyone is struggling to keep up? Worst of all, that kind of development is considered by many to be the norm: simply accepting poor performance and the stresses of up and down results as the cost of doing business.
Why does this happen? Because of complacency, inconsistency and a far too narrow view of the role of sales. Sellers need look at their job as more than just executing the linear process of converting opportunities to sales. To create consistent results today, you must embrace a 360-degree customer-engagement model.
In this action-packed keynote, Colleen tosses out the traditional opportunity-conversion mindset and replaces it with a winning plan to develop your sales radar. Including:
- Why ubiquity is the best way to attract the best and brightest leads into your pipeline,
- How qualifying the opportunity is your responsibility as well as that of the buyer,
- That not all clients deserve the right to grow equally, and
- How your best clients should be selling to your best leads.
In Pursuit of More
Selling More in Today’s New Economy
The rules have changed in today’s buying culture. The customers are different. How they buy is different. And even economy in which you sell to them is different.
Buyers have embraced these changes quickly and dramatically. They want more.
But far too many sales teams remain stuck in the past. They still use outdated tactics, such as cold calling (which now has a less than 1% success rate), canned pitches that are irrelevant to the customer, and manipulative closing tricks that do nothing but stagnate sales results.
Have your selling models evolved to profit from this change? If they haven’t, it’s a mistake that’s costing you money and customers every day.
The Pursuit of More takes you deep inside the mind of today’s customer. Price sensitive, yet strapped for time. Mobile powered and yet crave personal connection. They are overwhelmed by choice and dependent on trusted others for help with who they do business with. Discover how you can:
- Adopt a winning combination of frequency and market reach to improve your closing speed by 40% and your closing ratios by 30%,
- Use your secret salesforce to influence your buyers before they even hear from you,
- Nail down the fine line between persistence and stalking to give you an instant 80% increase in call-back ratios, and
- Leverage today’s best sellers—the hybrid “MarSellers”—for the benefit of selling more in less time in their territory.
The Magnitism of Value
Standout by Selling Value – Not Negotiating Price
In today’s highly competitive marketplace, it’s no longer negotiable whether you close a sale on your terms and with balanced profits. It’s a requirement. Value—not price—must lead that conversation you’re having with your customer.
But what if your customers don’t appreciate value? What if they are only focused on buying at the lowest price? Those are beliefs: not facts.
In this keynote, Colleen unlocks the myth that clients are not interested in value by reminding sellers that the only value that matters is the value that matters to the client. It’s up to sellers to discover, communicate and position what the customers values uniquely for maximum profit.
Anyone can convert their sales pitch into customer value, using Colleen’s model. But come prepared to hear and be persuaded by provocative, unorthodox ideas that are proven to work in today’s new economy, including:
- How to close 80% of negotiations without dropping your price,
- Using a buying map to create urgency and improve margins, and
- Learn why the buyer can’t say “no need” if you’ve done your job.
Colleen Francis
Featured Books
Right on the Money: New Principles for Bold Growth
by Colleen Francis
Nonstop Sales Boom
by Colleen Francis
Has the last week of each quarter in your business become a mad scramble to meet quota? Do your year-end reports show sporadic and unexplainable highs some weeks that will be near impossible to meet next year, as well as mysterious lows that ruined your goals for a 10 percent increase? For many sales organizations, anomalies such as these are strangely commonplace and unshakeable without intentional efforts to ratify them. Nonstop Sales Boom explains how to break this unhealthy cycle and achieve strong, steady results--every quarter, from every member of the team.Author and experienced sales leader for over twenty years Colleen Francis says the secret to leaving behind the roller-coaster reports and achieving sustaining, steady success is to broaden the focus from merely closing deals to actively nurturing the four critical stages of client engagement: - Attraction: Fill the funnel with lucrative prospects- Participation: Turn them into customers faster- Growth: Invest in valued clients- Leverage: Turn customers into referral generatorsWhen companies concentrate on only one or two of these areas, their results become erratic. But by becoming purposeful toward all four, simultaneously, they will systematically attract a regular flow of prospects and move them smoothly through the pipeline--taking the chaos and pressure away from the end of quarter for good!
Honesty Sells
by Colleen Francis
Looking for an edge in today's tough selling market? Honesty Sells challenges you to abandon clichéd sales techniques that rely on manipulation and deceit. Instead, by being honest and open with clients, you will be rewarded with long-term, profitable relationships--at the expense of no one but your competition...
PRAISE FOR HONESTY SELLS
"I've been in the field of sales leadership for twenty-four years with a major organization. I've recruited, trained, and developed thousands of salespeople over those years. Where has this book been? It should be a must-read for every new salesperson. This is a simple topic that isn't easy to execute day to day. Honesty Sells helps you change your mental map about how to approach business and relationships. Do the right thing....always!"
--Scott DiGiammarino, Group Vice President, Ameriprise Financial
"Honesty Sells has already made a huge impact in my business and it's a keeper. I recommend it for any business CEO trying to maximize and keep their profits."
--Richard Strauss, President, Strauss Radio Strategies, Inc.
"Honesty Sells is not just a book for salespeople. As a public relations professional, Gaffney and Francis's solid principles and coaching have helped me to develop and maintain relationships that are key to the success of my business."
--Avery Mann, Director of Media & Public Relations, FOX TV's America's Most Wanted
"Literally thirty minutes after absorbing their sales advice, I was on the phone applying concepts and strategies that enabled me to effectively move forward a deal accounting for 57 percent of my quota for the entire sales quarter. Here's the best part: this was during my first month on the job."
--Raj Shahani, Yahoo!
"Thank you so much for the inspiration. Your selling techniques were just the shot in the arm that this old veteran really needed. I have four new clients in just a week's time! Hip hip hooray!!"
--Nancy Daniels, Regional Director, HelmsBriscoe
"A top-notch sales pro who knows how to make progress in a difficult market. Bad economy. Government sales. Makes no difference--the job gets done."
--Paul Lemberg, Lemberg and Associates
"In addition to the practical and proven tips and techniques, this advice is based on extensive sales research and investigation with respect to what produces results. All the 'out of the box' suggestions are attention-getting but also get results!"
--Janet Armstrong, Director, Management Consulting, Ajilon Consulting
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