About Us
Our Team
The Barrett team is genuinely international, working with a wide variety of organisations, large and small, across a broad range of industry sectors throughout Australia, New Zealand and globally. Given the international dimension of this function, that experience is directly relevant here, not simply a general credential.
Our methodologies, Human-Centred Communication and Selling Better, are deliberately built to be culturally neutral, so they can be adopted and embedded across different cultural settings rather than requiring wholesale adaptation for every market. This lets people apply the underlying skills and principles while adjusting them to local conditions and cultural nuance, with genuine effect rather than a diluted, one-size-fits-all version of the method.
In December 2022, ACG Films & Foils and Barrett won Gold in the Best Program for Sales Enablement category at the TISS Leap Vault CLO Awards, presented at the Chief Learning Officers Summit in India, for the “Beyond Barriers” sales program, external recognition of the same cross-cultural capability this review would draw on.
Sue Barrett
Founder and CEO
Sue Barrett is a systems thinker and behavioural strategist who has spent more than three decades studying why sales and commercial performance succeeds or stalls, not only at the level of technique, but at the level of structure and human behaviour underneath it. Founder and CEO of Barrett Consulting Group since 1995, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacology and Immunology from Monash University, alongside qualifications in strategic management, executive coaching and Blue Ocean Strategy, and is a certified practitioner in Hogan, TMS and SPQ*Gold psychometric assessments.
Sue’s methodology treats commercial performance as a dynamic system that fails at predictable points, closing three gaps in order: Relevance, does the market see and recognise your value; Structural, does the commercial engine actually work; and Commercial and Sales Capability, can your people execute it in front of a real buyer. This diagnostic approach is grounded in original research, including Barrett’s 2026 Get Your Seat at the Table study across 229 ANZ B2B organisations, and more than three decades of hands-on work across virtually every sector, from ASX-listed businesses to industrial B2B, professional services and not-for-profits. Creator of the Selling Better Operating System™, author of the weekly Barrett Sales Blog since 2007, and a recognised leader in sales systems thinking, strategy and sales capability development internationally, Sue has trained over 50,000 professionals across five continents.
Jens Hartmann
Head of Sales System Design
His work is twofold: designing how an organisation sells, and building the capability of the people doing the selling.
The first is diagnostic. He maps how an organisation actually sells — what its best people already do that has never been written down, what is missing, and what will be needed as the business changes — then turns it into a process the whole team can follow.
The second follows from it. The process shows what people need to be able to do. Where they fall short is rarely where the problem starts, so training design has to evolve from the cause, not the symptoms. What follows is not a single workshop but blended and spaced along 70:20:10 lines, with most of the development happening in the work itself.
Jens trained as a systemic consultant under Prof. Dr. Fritz B. Simon’s Heidelberg Group, which shapes how he reads organisations — as living systems rather than sets of isolated problems. He holds a Master’s in Communication from the University of the Arts, Berlin, and a Bachelor of Business Administration and Banking.
In 14 years with Barrett he has worked across financial services, industrial B2B, professional services and technical delivery businesses, most often with organisations going through change or restructuring, where the gap between what people can do and what they are now being asked to do is widest.
Hannah Wiliamson
Head of Growth & Operations
Hannah is a systems-minded strategist and delivery specialist who brings a design discipline to commercial work most consultancies never think to apply. As Barrett’s Growth & Operations Manager, she works alongside Sue and Jens on sales process mapping and commercial strategy. By translating complex, often invisible ways of working into something structured, she’s able to engineer genuinely usable tools that actually get followed rather than shelved.
Trained in communication design at Swinburne University of Technology (Bachelor of Design, Communication Design), Hannah brings a rare eye for structure and clarity to commercial systems that are usually built without either. Over five years with Barrett, she has run client projects across strategy, process mapping and delivery, and is known for her warm, depth and rigour she brings to every engagement.
Jobst Schmalenbach
General Manager & Geek
Jobst is originally from Muenster in north west Germany, where he completed a trade apprenticeship as a Fitter and Turner and then went on to study Mechanical Engineering while working for his father’s business which supplied all the internal furnishing and painting needs including tools for homes and small businesses. Whilst studying he also drove for a large trucking company throughout Europe and was a DJ for a number of years. When Jobst graduated with a B Eng he took a position as a mechanical engineer but found the business and industry too restrictive.
Jobst migrated to Australia in 1989 and switched his focus to IT commencing a degree in Computer Science at Flinders University. He met Sue at the National Masters Swimming Titles in Brisbane in 1990 and later that year moved from Adelaide to Melbourne to continue his studies at Monash University where he completed a Bachelor of Digital Systems with First Class Honours. Having found his niche, Jobst has become a highly knowledgable and proficient IT professional who is very familiar and hands on with both hardware and software.
Jobst is Barrett’s General Manager and Technical Director, and is responsible for Systems Administration, web design and everything that has any connection with IT.
Jobst is also known as Chief Geek. He basically makes things work.
Barrett Sales Blog
