weak-ties-strong-business-the-brain-connection-already-wired-into-your-bottom-line

Part 1: Weak Ties, Strong Business: The Brain Connection Already Wired Into Your Bottom Line

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Collaboration, Customer experience, Customer Service

In 30 seconds

The Problem: Automation promised efficiency but delivered anonymity. Self-checkout theft is rising, staff face unprecedented aggression, and customers feel processed rather than served. QUT research found 87% of retail workers experienced verbal abuse in a year. The root cause isn’t technology – it’s the deliberate removal of human connection from transactions.

The Shift: Industry 5.0 corrects course, keeping automation for data and routine tasks while restoring people for context, empathy and trust. Granovetter’s weak ties – brief, familiar interactions – are now proven to drive wellbeing, reduce aggression, and lift retention. They’re biology, not sentiment.

The Solution: Design connection back in. Familiar faces at the counter, genuine warmth, being seen as a person. When price and product commoditize, the human interface is the only uncopyable advantage. Connection isn’t cheap, but disconnection costs far more.

Part 1: Weak Ties, Strong Business: The Brain Connection Already Wired Into Your Bottom Line Read Post »

how-do-you-solve-a-sales-problem-you-cannot-name

How Do You Solve a Sales Problem You Can’t Name?

By / / AI & Data, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Sales System

In 30 seconds

The Problem: More leaders are taking vague but real business problems to AI: a pipeline that keeps getting longer, numbers that haven’t moved in years. AI answers the words it’s given, so a vague description gets generic advice.

The Shift: The symptom is rarely the problem. A long pipeline can have several very different causes, and each needs a completely different fix.

The Solution: Diagnose before you prescribe. Find the real cause before you build the plan. Barrett can help.

How Do You Solve a Sales Problem You Can’t Name? Read Post »

talk-with-leaders-about-the-sales-process-then-build-the-coaching-process-to-work-with

Part 2: Coaching to the sales system: what it takes, and where it stops.

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Growth, Sales Process Maps

In 30 seconds

The Problem: A sales system makes sales coaching easier, but not automatic. Leaders asked to coach to a process they don’t yet understand will struggle. A poor process embeds the wrong behaviour, and no system reliably fixes a motivation problem.

The Shift: Coaching to a system works when the structure comes first, the system stays sound, and coaches can tell a skill gap from a will gap by asking one question: if their job depended on it, could this person do it?

The Solution: Walk leaders through the sales process and its logic before they coach to it. Keep the process current against real deal outcomes, and handle will problems with the right conversation. Then build the coaching capability to work with it.

Part 2: Coaching to the sales system: what it takes, and where it stops. Read Post »

you-dont-need-to-be-a-great-sales-coach-you-need-something-to-coach-to

Part 1: You don’t need to be a great sales coach. You need something to coach to.

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Leadership, Sales Coaching, Sales Growth, Sales performance, Sales Process Maps

In 30 seconds

The Problem: When sales results disappoint, organisations invest in turning sales managers into better sales coaches. But most managers were promoted for selling, not for developing others. Exceptional coaching talent is rare, and it can’t be scaled across a team.

The Shift: The leverage isn’t in coaching skill. It’s in what the sales coaching is anchored to. Like checklists in aviation and surgery, a sales system makes ordinary practitioners reliably good.

The Solution: Give managers a clear sales process, agreed tools, consistent messaging and a common methodology. Sales coaching then becomes a shared conversation about the gap between the process and reality, not a matter of personal opinion.

Part 1: You don’t need to be a great sales coach. You need something to coach to. Read Post »

hold-your-price-when-a-competitor-will-not-hold-theirs

The below-cost trap: how to hold your price when a competitor won’t hold theirs

By / / Buying, Competition, Negotiation, Value Based Selling

In 30 seconds

The Problem: When costs spike, a competitor often cuts price below what it costs to deliver, betting anxious customers will follow the lowest number. Sellers holding a sustainable price feel they’re losing before the conversation starts.

The Shift: They’re not. The response isn’t matching the price, it is asking better questions, acknowledging the customer’s margin pressure, and understanding what they’re weighing beyond the invoice.

The Solution: Build the total cost picture, reliability, service, switching cost, in real numbers, not adjectives. Look for genuine ways to lower the customer’s actual costs. If a discount is unavoidable, trade it for something in return.

The below-cost trap: how to hold your price when a competitor won’t hold theirs Read Post »

you-have-paid-for-the-crm-are-you-getting-the-roi

You’ve Paid for the CRM. Are You Getting the ROI?

By / / CRM, Sales Coaching, Sales Process Maps

In 30 seconds

The Problem: CRM failure rates have sat between 47 and 55 percent for two decades. The cause is rarely the software itself.

The Shift: Move from instinct-led “hero seller” selling, fragile and unscalable, to a mapped sales process with telemetry across every stage, the same discipline that gives F1 teams their edge.

The Solution: Barrett maps your sales process into a steering instrument for coaching and alignment, captured in a sales playbook fully integrated with your CRM and AI stack, built from whatever you already have in place, not started from scratch.

You’ve Paid for the CRM. Are You Getting the ROI? Read Post »

asking-ai-for-top-sales-trainers-gets-you-the-wrong-answer

The Buyer’s Trap: Why Asking AI for “Top Sales Trainers” Gets You the Wrong Answer

By / / Business Acumen, Learning and Development, Sales Research, Sales Training

In 30 seconds

The Problem: Asking AI for “top sales trainers” returns a popularity leaderboard, fame and visibility ranked as if they were evidence of results. This happens because product-category questions can only ever surface product-category data.

The Shift: The fix is not a smarter AI, it is a better-framed question. Buyers who describe the actual business outcome they need, and the real capability gap underneath it, get fundamentally different, more useful search results than buyers who search for the product itself.

The Solution: A real example: a brief describing a scaling investment firm’s need to build listening and questioning skills across a technically strong team, framed around business outcome rather than “sales training,” surfaced an entirely different, more relevant shortlist. Discernment in the question produces discernment in the answer.

The Buyer’s Trap: Why Asking AI for “Top Sales Trainers” Gets You the Wrong Answer Read Post »

segment-stakeholders-and-use-differentiated-messaging

The Four Commercial Mistakes Mission-Led Organisations Keep Making

By / / Brand & Reputation, Business Growth, Sales Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

In 30 seconds

The Problem: Mission-led organisations often mistake public attention for a go-to-market strategy, repeating the same mistakes of undifferentiated messaging, campaign dependency, and sequencing branding before strategy.

The Shift: Commercial growth is not automatically good for a mission, it must be designed deliberately to strengthen rather than dilute it.

The Solution: Segment stakeholders properly, build differentiated messaging for each, and grow the commercial system with mission preservation built in from the start.

The Four Commercial Mistakes Mission-Led Organisations Keep Making Read Post »

Scroll to Top