The Difference between Generosity & Reciprocity & why this really matters

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Communication, Sales Relationships

What is the difference between Generosity and Reciprocity and why does this matter?

In simple terms and for the purposes of our work in sales and business, and maybe life in general:

Reciprocity

Is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit. Think buying and selling and creating a fair exchange of value.

Generosity

Is the practice of giving something -time, money, food, kindness, advice, etc.- to people, usually, but not always, in need, without expecting something in return from the recipient of our generosity.

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? But we can get ourselves into all sorts of relationship …

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Hybrid Selling – rebuilding how we sell and buy

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, covid-19, Remote selling

Sales Trend 6 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2021 explains how and why remote selling is here to stay.

COVID has completely reshaped how we do B2B sales with an almost exponential rise in the number of digital / remote client meetings being undertaken on video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Skype, or Google. Video conferencing and chat has replaced face-to-face encounters overnight. By now, most of us would have experienced video conferences through a number of those platforms, helping us stay in contact to buyers and sellers. What started out as a crisis …

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Unethical Self-Promoters – how a few bad apples spoil it for everyone

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Ethics & Values, Leadership, Self Promotion, Uncategorized

Welcome to part 2 on Unethical Self-Promoters which is inspired by a recent tweet by Pepper Bismol (@Gurl_getreal) who accurately described the real and dire consequences of a ‘few bad apples’:

‘The current usage of a ‘few bad apples’ bothers me. A few bad apples spoil the barrel. If you put a rotting apple in with three dozen good one, every adjacent apple will be rotting withing days.

‘A few bad apples’ does NOT mean ‘we have a good barrel but, oh well, sometime bad things happen’. ‘A few bad apples’ …

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Unethical self-promoters walk amongst us – be very aware

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Call Reluctance, Ethics & Values, Prospecting, Self Promotion

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series on Unethical Self-Promoters.

Back in 1988, I was introduced to a body of research* that focused specifically on the concept of self-promotion, prospecting, and new business development, and the learned behaviours and attitudes that give rise to the fear of self-promotion and sales call reluctance. This body of research was an illuminating, eye-opening, life changing experience for me in many ways – it was a key catalyst that helped kick-start the work I do today. Since then I’ve had the privilege of introducing tens of thousands of people to this research that includes …

Unethical self-promoters walk amongst us – be very aware Read Post »

Listening beyond self interest to achieve a fair exchange of value

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Business Acumen, Common Ground, Communication, Life Skills, Sales Tips

Back in 2012, I wrote the article – Are you really listening or just waiting to speak – which resonates with salespeople and leaders and gets them thinking about how well, or not, they really listen to others and how comfortable they are with silence and creating the space for others – in this case, their clients – to be heard and understood.

As we say in the Selling Better Manifesto, Selling is about creating a fair exchange of value between buyer and seller; it’s about mutual prosperity. For that to happen, we need to …

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Rebuilding Leadership for a Better Normal

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Leadership, Sales Leadership, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 5 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2021 looks into what business leaders need to stop, start, and keep doing to rebuild leadership for a better normal.

At a local level, throughout 2020, we’ve seen many businesses, their leaders, employees and customers go through tremendous personal and economic pain while others have prospered and gone from strength to strength.

Taking the lead in such an unprecedented time of chaos and uncertainty means that business owners, boards and C-suite leaders including sales leaders simply have no option but to continue to work through all their choices, …

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I’m in sales, you’re in sales, we’re all in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Brain Science, Call Reluctance, Everybody lives by selling something, Human-centred, Life Skills, Opportunity, Prospecting, Sales Psychology, Selling Better, Success

When my eldest son was eleven, he said to me ‘Mum I don’t believe everybody lives by selling something’. I said, ‘That’s interesting, why do you say that?’ and he started to try to persuade and convince me as to why this statement wasn’t true. So I said to him ‘by you trying to persuade and convince me why this isn’t true, aren’t you trying to sell me something?’ To which he said ‘Ahh, I get it Mum.’

Yes, we are all in sales, one way or another.

If you have ever tried to initiate contact with a person …

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Sales Strategy – more than tactics & incremental growth

By / / Blog, Case study, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Strategy

Corporate, business, and marketing strategies are often too broad, or too focused on either financial or brand results only as to offer any clear direction to a sales team. Which means the support, focus, direction, standards, and mission of a sales operation is often reduced to little more than generating more business at better margins.

Because of this broader focus on the bigger picture, sales strategies all too often become a series of tactical activities that do little more than support marketing. In the end all that this achieves is making sales an expensive, frustrating exercise with salespeople …

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The 8 Sales Management Essentials

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Sales Training

Most sales managers have sales experience. It makes sense from a career path perspective – you’re good at selling so your next logical career step is into sales management.

However, this is where the logic usually comes unstuck because selling and sales management are not the same thing.

Like a lot of salespeople learn selling by default – they fall into a sales career rather study and learn it by design – the same goes for sales management. Sales management is the least trained area of the management disciplines. Like selling, too many sales managers are left to fend for themselves, often …

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sales-trends-2021-trend-4-welcome-to-the-age-where-less-is-more

Welcome to the age where less is more

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Brand & Reputation, covid-19, Environment & Sustainability, Marketing, Sales Trends, Selling Better, Sustainability & Environment

Sales trend 4 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2021 is about the unexpected changes that COVID brought about in relation to brands.

By guest author Ben Peacock, Founder of Australia’s sustainability and brand purpose specialists, Republic of Everyone.

Meh.

Everything was going so well. Survey after survey was showing people’s concern for the environment was finally translating to sales of products that promised to help do something about it.

Recycled rubber sneakers, carbon neutral phone plans, cafes run by street kids…sustainability was seeing a boom the likes it had never seen before. …

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