The Noble Profession of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Sales Essentials, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Self Development, Selling Better, Success

The statement ‘The noble profession of Selling’ may sit well with some. While many others would find ways to say everything to the contrary, bringing up stories about how they or others were ripped off by shonky salespeople. I mean why is it that when someone’s deceived by someone else they say ‘they’ve done a sales job on them’? There’s nothing noble about that, you’d agree.

In a world where it’s too easy to engage and influence people with catchy slogans and memes that can propagate negative stereotypes, fear of the other, division, misinformation and myths, and keep people ignorant or …

The Noble Profession of Selling Read Post »

Storytelling for Better Sales & Enriching Relationships

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Communication, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Self Development, Self Promotion, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The truth is we all tell stories every day in a myriad of ways in varieties of situations for a variety of reasons.

In ancient times, oral storytelling was the original way we passed down our knowledge and wisdom to the next generation.  Here in Australia, First Nations people call it The Dreamtime.

Storytelling is inherent in human nature. Storytelling is inherent in sales.

Stories told and aligned to the organisation’s purpose and principles, enrich, transform and sell.

Storytelling like Selling, is ubiquitous. 

How well we tell stories, the right stories at the right time for the right reasons to the right people well that’s a whole other story.

This is what I would like to focus on here, especially as it relates to selling.

But I have to set the scene with you first.

Over 10 years ago I had the pleasure of meeting Sandy McDonald, an author, TEDx speaker, and a clarity and storytelling trainer and coach. I was presenting to a group of people at a public seminar on The Psychology of Call Reluctance and the Fear of Self Promotion. Sandy was in the audience. The reason I remember Sandy so well is that a few days post this session, she sent me a blog she had written about me, my topic and the stories I shared and the positive impact it had on her. This had never happened to me before and I was very moved by her narrative.

We connected on Linkedin, chatted every now and then but it wasn’t until early 2019 that we reconnected again on a much deeper level. You see I had just released my book ‘142 Days of Gratitude that changed my life forever’ and posted a chapter excerpt which explained what prompted me to write the book. Sandy reconnected with me again posting her story about what my story meant to her.

What became clear is that our relationship was being forged on storytelling and that storytelling is at the heart of every human relationship. Which is why we are now working together to help other people develop their craft in storytelling to build meaningful connections and forge better relationships that drive better business and create better outcomes personally and professionally.

I’m a storyteller by default because I have never studied the craft of storytelling like Sandy has. For instance, Sandy’s been working with us to Barrett to help us further develop our stories. She’s been working with us on how we tell the story of our 25 years of evolution at Barr

Storytelling for Better Sales & Enriching Relationships Read Post »

Global Trends

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Blog, covid-19, Forecasting, Systems Thinking

Sales trend 1 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trend Report for 2020 is about what businesses and sales teams can do now to start making a difference for people and the planet.

Now is always a good time to confront an uncertain future. While forecasting accurately beyond 90 days is generally a coin toss, it is never pointless asking (and sharing) questions about the future and likely scenarios. This is especially useful if it flushes out clear dissenters, who may have an unconventional view or new information.

Predictions can also be over complicated – nominating odds …

Global Trends Read Post »

Crowdsourcing Sales Forecasting to deliver better certainty

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Forecasting, Innovation, Opportunity, Sales Forecasting, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Selling Better, Success

People love certainty, especially when it comes to business. Which is why sales forecasting and sales pipeline management can often be the bane of sales leaders and their sales teams’ lives with senior management constantly on their backs wanting to know what deals will land and when, and when the revenue will start to come in. It’s relentless.

So given the current state of the world and the climate of uncertainty, it’s a good time to look at some of the latest thinking and work being done to improve the certainty of sales forecasting and pipeline management.

Current Situation with Sales Forecasting

Tracking …

Crowdsourcing Sales Forecasting to deliver better certainty Read Post »

Celebrating 25 years of Helping People & Businesses Sell Better

By / / Education in Sales, Entrepreneurship, Sales Coaching, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Training, Selling Better

The 9th January, 2020 marks 25 years in business for Barrett.

25 years of helping people and businesses sell better.

25 years of exploration, research, experimentation, creation, building, encouragement and promotion of, and learning and education in ethical human centred sales systems, strategies, processes and practices.

25 years of a self-funded research project focused on creating The Selling Better Movement with the hope it will help people understand that there’s a better way of doing business.

A way in which we can all be prosperous.

I started the business out of my home office with $3,000 in capital on 9 January, 1995 with an idea …

Celebrating 25 years of Helping People & Businesses Sell Better Read Post »

Why we prioritise Virtues over Values in our work at Barrett

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Life Skills, Optimism

As a consulting and education firm, we go into many organisations and they inevitably have a set of values i.e. integrity, honesty, passion, customer centric/obsessed, courage, and so on.

That’s nice on one level, but how are these values practised every day? How are they demonstrated and enacted?

This is usually the missing piece, which is why my preference is to be virtues driven rather than values driven.

Values and virtues are often seen as synonymous, however, they are quite different.

Simply put, values are goals or ideals or even opinions.

Virtues are behaviours showing high moral standards. Virtues are how we practice and demonstrate …

Why we prioritise Virtues over Values in our work at Barrett Read Post »

12 Sales Trends for 2020 – The Time is Now

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category

2020 marks 25 years in business for Barrett and over this period of time we have seen many things – good, bad and indifferent – when it comes to managing businesses and sales teams, successfully or otherwise. Fads, trends, myths, hype, well-worn facts, innovations and home-truths have all been a part of this 25 year journey.

We’ve talked with over 10,000 business leaders from the C-suite and Sales about their issues, concerns, ideas and opportunities when it comes to sales strategy, sales operations, processes, salespeople and culture. Some have been the early adopters and pragmatists – those who could see changes, …

12 Sales Trends for 2020 – The Time is Now Read Post »

Selling Better, Faster – Total Sales Team Turnaround

By / / Case study, Optimism, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, sales-process-map, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Systems Thinking

I’m feeling elated and vindicated yet again.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the future of sales systems and sales stewardship.

Two weeks ago I sat down with a very large key B2B client of ours to do a two year retrospective on their Selling Better Project. Considering where we started with this Executive General Manager  discussing his major issues, concerns, ideas and opportunities around their lack of sales strategy, sales operational framework and sales processes, the lack of stewardship and coordinated discipline within the national sales team, the turnaround and results have been thrilling on many levels:

  • Sales are up 8% and steadily …

Selling Better, Faster – Total Sales Team Turnaround Read Post »

The role of marketing in developing trust

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Marketing, Sales Trends, Trust

Sales trend 12 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends report 2019 looks at the key things that marketing teams in B2B environments need to do to help their businesses win back the trust of their customers.

The endeavour of building and maintaining a trusted B2B brand is far more complex than it used to be since the advent of omni-channel marketing both locally and around the world.

While some CMOs (chief marketing officers) have been successful in this new omni-channel world, many have failed – failed to take action, failed to adapt, and failure to engage their sales …

The role of marketing in developing trust Read Post »

Selling Better, Faster using Real Time Sales Education

By / / Coaching, Collaboration, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Environment & Sustainability, Optimism, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training, sales-process-map, Selling Better, Solution Selling

I’m feeling elated.

I’m feeling vindicated.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the future of sales education and sales mastery.

Three weeks ago we started working with and coaching a telesales team of 9 people based in regional NSW.

Week one post the first session, sales had already started to improve and by week three, this sales team had their best sales week ever. The sales leader revealed this in the session we had this week and attributed it to the training we are doing.

Now that’s something to be optimistic about.

How did we do this?

Our focus was to help them sell better, faster using real …

Selling Better, Faster using Real Time Sales Education Read Post »

Scroll to Top