Sales – the new team sport

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Role Clarity, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Trends

Sales trend 9 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 explores the characteristics and benefits of truly integrated sales teams.

The future of the individual ‘solo’ salesperson is coming to an end for most businesses.

What is taking their place is an integrated team of people working on sales together.

Sales leaders do not need teams of individual B2B salespeople, they need people with a diverse range of skills working as integrated teams across a range of sales disciplines and capabilities.

Teams who can cover areas such as sales and territory planning, account development, CRM & sales pipeline …

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Why Progress, NOT Perfection, helps us find Common Ground for the Common Good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Voltaire

“The world is becoming very black and white with people striving for perfection where only the best is acceptable. If we continue down this road, then we will lose everything that is human.” Madeline Stuart*

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill

Our relationship with perfection and progress can be rather fraught.

In the human world that often promotes perfection or the idealised state, i.e.

The perfect body

The perfect marriage/relationship

The perfect career

The perfect mind

The perfect way to be sustainable, and so on…

We can …

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Trusting optimism

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Opportunity, Optimism, Wellbeing

Sales trend 8 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 is about the benefits for people and businesses of adopting an optimistic approach.

By guest author Victor Perton.

It is said that trust is in short supply in Australia. The Edelman Trust Barometer is trotted out in pessimistic speeches to suggest that Australian leadership is in a state of collapse. However, the Edelman folk are confused by their own findings. Given the current prosperity and wellbeing in Australia, with 25 years of uninterrupted growth, a presentation by Edelman suggested that the place in which Brand …

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How prepared is ‘The Lucky Country’ for tough times?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Collaboration, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Opportunity, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Uncategorized

Ah the good times…

Ah 28 years of uninterrupted growth…

Ah Australia, ‘The Lucky Country’*…

Ah ‘How good is Australia?’…

Pssst. But don’t talk about the R** word…

We are indeed fortunate in Australia to have access to many resources, space, and talented people; however, our luck maybe running out if we carry on drinking the ‘recession avoidance’ Kool Aid, carry on with our old ways of managing business and thinking everything is rosy instead of adapting to the array of changes, challenges, and opportunities that are out there in the market place.

Which is why I couldn’t go past economist Jim Stanford’s comments in Paddy …

How prepared is ‘The Lucky Country’ for tough times? Read Post »

Debunking myths for the Common Good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Resilience, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Success, Sustainability & Environment

If you had to put a percentage weighting on the following questions what would your answers look like?

  • How much of your individual success so far is solely down to your own efforts?
  • How much of your individual success so far is as a result of the success of your community – where you were born, what family you were raised in, what school you went to, networks, friends, government support, infrastructure and the era in which you live?

    • It’s probably impossible to give definitive answers to these questions; however, I suspect, like me, you are aware that much of our individual success …

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    One main reason most start-ups fail

    By / / Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Tips, Success

    Anyone can have an idea. Ideas are cheap and they are plenty.

    The challenge is turning that ‘amazing’ idea or invention into a commercially viable business entity.

    Many people throw their hearts, souls, energy and wallets into developing their idea. Designing, crafting and forming it. Then thinking about ways how they are going to market their idea to customers using marketing strategies and tactics. They are looking from the inside out.

    Yet the key questions many start-ups fail to explore first are:

    • Are there customers and markets looking for a solution that your idea can solve?
    • Are these potential customers prepared to pay for your …

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    What is the correct title for a salesperson? – New edition

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Culture, Sales Tips

    What is the correct title for a salesperson’s role? What should I call myself?

    This is a contentious issue… And a question we get asked frequently.

    The answer will depend on why you are asking the question. Are you asking because:

  • You think the title ‘sales representative’ doesn’t adequately describe what you do.
  • You are uncomfortable being called a ‘salesperson’ or ‘sales representative’ for whatever reason.
  • You think ‘salesperson’ or ‘sales representative’ doesn’t represent or position you in the best light as a professional business person to your clients, etc. even though your role involves selling?

    • All of these questions are valid and can present problems …

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    Brand and Purpose Come Together

    By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Marketing, Vision, Mission & Purpose

    Sales Trend 7 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 is about how purpose, employee and customer experience, and the promises you make contribute to the brand result.

    By guest author, Michel Hogan, Brand Counsel.

    While the general thinking about brand remains dominated by marketing tropes of visual identity and high-profile campaigns, among the logo makeovers and high-profile ad campaigns a shift is happening to a broader and more encompassing view.

    The evolving nature of brand will continue in 2019, and both organisations and individuals will need to grapple with the move beyond markers of …

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    Engaging with words and stories to find common ground

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Opportunity, Sustainability & Environment, Trust, Wellbeing

    Using words & stories to find common ground & progress towards a better future together

    As mentioned previously, finding common ground is indispensable to our progress, especially if we are to move forward as communities and solve the most pressing issues we have to deal with as humans inhabiting an abundant but vulnerable and finite planet.

    In this article we explore how words, language and the stories we tell can help us find common ground or tear us apart, and look at some examples to demonstrate how things can go either way.

    Have you ever shared a story or anecdote that sounded perfectly …

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