Selling deception & enabling criminals – how we’ve hit a new low

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture

I’m so furious, but sadly not surprised at all, with the news this week about the unethical, shameful and, frankly, criminal actions of companies such as Westpac and NAB. They are not alone, far from it, but they stand out as current heinous examples of the deception, greed and corruption emanating from the highest levels of business and its devastating impact on people.

Someone asked me the other day if this was the fault of the salespeople who sold the junk insurance or billed dead people, or the fault of compliance teams that ignored 23 million illegal transactions. Yes, they are …

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The key differences between B2C & B2B Sales Market Segmentation

By / / Collaboration, Education in Sales, Marketing, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Strategy, Success

A word of caution, this topic can be very tricky as there are various schools of thought around what is a segment and how to segment, with Marketing Segmentation being the most well known in business circles. However, for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on an area that is less well known but equally important – Sales Market Segmentation with a particular emphasis on B2B sales.

At Barrett, we do a lot of work with B2B sales and marketing teams in helping them define their sales market segments so they are very clear …

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Building trust through personal image

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Life Skills, Presentation & Grooming, Sales Presentation & Grooming, Sales Trends, Trust

In Sales Trend 11 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019, guest author Leadership Stylist Helen Robinett discusses how our personal image can help build trust.

By guest author Helen Robinett.

Trust in business has never been more crucial than what it is right now.

People do business with people they like and trust. Full stop. No-one does business with an ‘organisation’.

Human beings are highly visual and it takes an instant to create a first impression. Gone are the days when it took 7 seconds to form a first impression. If I walk to the front of …

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Gratitude and Materialism

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Buying, Common Ground, Emotional Intelligence, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Life Skills, Sustainability & Environment

Practising gratitude has made me focus on other matters and much less on material things. I have found that I am far less worried about ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ or experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out). I think less about things and more about people.

There is a place for materialism in our world. I appreciate nice things. I am not an ascetic who disavows material goods or worldly possessions. But I don’t feel the need to strive for them madly. I also understand and appreciate how materialism works as a driver for so much of …

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The Holy Trinity of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Buying, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Solution Selling

This post has been inspired by my colleague, Ben Shute, who I work arm in arm with bridging the divide between sales and procurement. He wrote about the Holy Trinity of Procurement Skills and so challenged me to do the same for Sales.

Here is my contribution.

The profession of selling requires a whole range of capabilities. It’s hard to know where to begin to define the 3 core elements for sales – the Holy Trinity of Selling.

So I’ll start with the master categories of Knowledge, Skills and Mindset from Barrett’s Sales Competency Dictionary.

Knowledge

Let’s …

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Why Procurement can and should be the epicentre of innovation for business

By / / Business Acumen, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Procurement

Procurement, whether they are aware of it or not, are the epicentre of innovation and leadership of complex systems management within organisations and across the supply chain, or at least they should be.

Their exposure to all elements of the supply chain can and should inform them and in turn other key stakeholders within and outside their organisations of the latest, the easiest, most sustainable, faster, ethical, better ways of doing business.

While they cannot expect to be experts in every area of business, they can and should be experts in systems, managing complexity and managing relationships which is what a supply …

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Tendering and Trust

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Business Acumen, Communication, Sales Trends, Uncategorized

Sales trend 10 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 is about the importance of trust when writing tenders that win.

By guest authors David Lunn and Kelly Richmond, Bidwrite

Building BID BELIEVABILITY

Developing tenders and proposals is key to winning and retaining business through contested sourcing processes. Most buying organisations, government and commercial, use these types of processes in one form or another. So there really is no escaping the need to produce written communications to, at least in part, persuade a client or prospect to choose us.

Data emerging from the USA, …

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Want a viable future? Opportunities abound in the Common Good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Case study, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Opportunity, Optimism, Selling Better, Sustainability & Environment

What type of board member, CEO or sales leader are you?

  • Are you stuck in the day-to-day looking to meet your monthly and quarterly targets, looking to maximise profit, shareholder return and your bonuses?
    OR
  • Are you looking into the future to see what lies ahead ensuring there is a viable sustainable path for all to follow and participate in?

    • In today’s world everything is up for grabs.

    Old institutions are crashing and dying because they held onto the past and failed to adapt.

    Take Thomas Cook Travel as a current case in point. While their leaders were bathing themselves in 29M pounds of bonuses, …

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    How should I assess a sales recruit?

    By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Talent

    Last time I wrote about what we should be looking for in a good sales recruit.

    This time we will look at how we go about assessing a sales recruit.

    There are a myriad of ways you can assess someone – some are legitimate and purpose built for sales recruitment while other methods wouldn’t stand up in a court of law even if they work for you. 

    Let’s take intuition or gut feel for instance.

    There is nothing wrong with using your gut feelings or intuition; however, using it as your only source of assessment criteria will make it hard …

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    What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Role Clarity, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

    What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit?

    This is a vexing question for many sales and business leaders.

    And some of the answers we still hear aren’t very helpful either.

    ‘They must be hunters.’

    ‘They need to be hungry.’

    ‘They’ve got to be able to close deals.’

    ‘They must have a mortgage and family so they are ‘motivated’ to sell more.’

    ‘They must have industry experience.’

    Notice anything familiar about most of these answers?

    They are all stuck in the ‘aggressive, self-serving, desperate approach to selling’ paradigm which is not what good selling actually is …

    What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit? Read Post »

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