Is Consumerism past its use-by-date?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Optimism, Selling Better, Sustainability & Environment

This is a very interesting, perplexing and vexing question which is now being discussed at all levels of society.

This question is not only an economic and business question but, increasingly, a moral question challenging the very nature of how we make a living, how we make money and how we function as communities, economies and societies.

At this very point in our existence when anyone can reach almost everyone, everywhere, selling our wares and enticing people to buy, we, in the West at least, are confronted by the spectre of overconsumption, excessive waste with its environmental impacts and the ignominy of …

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Trust, financial institutions and the markets.

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Sales Trends, Selling Better

Sales Trend 2 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 touches on a very timely topic in Australia – trust and the financial sector.

By guest author David Robertson, Head of Economic and Market Research, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank.

2018 has not been a good year for the stock prices of Australian financial institutions, with the ‘Financials’ sub-index of the ASX200 down over 16% from its high of 6621 in January. The rest of the market is also lower but not to the same extent –and the broader ASX200 index did reach a fresh ’18 peak recently in August …

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Sales Tips for everyday life situations

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Selling Better, Sustainability & Environment

Whether we are a salesperson or not, there are times in our daily lives when knowing how to sell well turns often awkward situations into positive outcomes for everyone.

We are social animals. We rely on others for our existence which means we need to engage with others in some way to be able to live effectively and have a meaningful existence.

Let’s look at the new school year as an example: there are often many new faces, new people to meet and people to interact with across the year whether you want to or not.

This means that people find …

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The rise of Ethical Selling in the new world order: The history of Sales Methodologies, revised & updated

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Ethics & Values, Selling Better, Solution Selling

Selling is a hot topic, especially the louder calls for more ethical, fairer, purpose driven business and selling practices. Given the recent findings from the Australian Banking Royal Commission and the emerging new world transparency highlighting various unethical, immoral and unsustainable business and sales practices across the collective value chain, the rise of an Ethical Purpose Driven Selling Methodology, as the new world order, is making its way into mainstream consciousness.

This got us revisiting our whitepaper, The History of Sales Methodologies – why some work and others don’t which we published in 2013. We wondered if there were enough significant …

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Sales Trend 1: Selling in times of social mistrust

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Optimism

Sales trend 1 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2019 tackles the issue of selling when trust in businesses and institutions is low.

While there has never been a better time to be alive with access to wonderful resources and opportunities, amazing innovations, advances in technology and better healthcare, that can encourage the potential for our evolution and mutual prosperity, there is a shadow of mistrust that is following us everywhere.

We have more choices than ever before, and yet, we are more wary, cynical and cautious. We are flooded with oceans of information that are polluted with fake news …

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24 years in business and 24 Big Lessons to share

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Optimism, Selling Better, Success

This week marks the 24th anniversary since I founded Barrett and, over the summer break, I had some time to reflect upon myself, my business’ journey and the many, many lessons learned over the last 24 years.

We often get our ‘business lessons’ from big corporates about how to do this or that; however, I have found that many of these corporate lessons do not always translate well into small (few than 20 employees) to medium sized businesses which make up over 90% of all business in Australia.

So given that I fall into that 90+% category and have managed to …

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12 Sales Trends for 2019 – Trust me, I’m in sales

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category

Trust is a vital element in our lives and, as such, it has been studied and debated for centuries.

Trust is the belief that someone or something is honest and will not harm you, or that someone or something is safe and reliable. Trust is necessary to the ongoing wellbeing of societies including business.

For the purposes of this report, we have contained trust to the business environment.

We have chosen to use the definition of trust that has been promoted by the Harvard School of Business, which is that for trust to exist in any given situation the following 3 elements have …

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Sales trend 12 – Sales Coaching, at the core of sales success

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Coaching, Sales Coaching

The last sales trend of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about sales coaching.

In recent years, sales leadership coaching has continuously grown in acceptance by the managers involved in this task, as well as in its meaningful incorporation into the overall sales architecture of sales organisations. It has shifted from being an additional Learning & Development opportunity to becoming a central and critical part of the overall evolution modern sales operations are going through.

When sales management coaching first received broader recognition some two decades ago, it was regarded as a great opportunity to train salespeople in …

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Ignore customer relationships at your peril: The demise of out-of-touch political parties

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Communication, Optimism, Selling Better, Strategy, Success

Even in the advent of big data, the nature of developing genuine customer relationships is generally not understood well enough by most businesses, and is not often on the agenda for thorough examination.

This got me thinking about political parties and the nature of their relationships with their party members and the broader communities upon which they rely upon to get elected.

In speaking with Leslie Roberts, Principal of ERM Advisory, he states that ‘In advice-based professional practices, such as accounting, financial planning, legal services, etc. it is all too common for the topic of customer relationships to be subject to gut-feeling, …

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Using ‘Intelligent Practice’ to enhance Sales Mastery & Results

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales performance, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

In a time poor world, many people including sales leaders and salespeople often bemoan the fact that they cannot seem to make time for important things like continued professional development, coaching, and thorough planning thus leaving their evolution and sales results to chance.

Rushing through the day, responding to ‘urgent’ matters and deadlines, getting in and out of sales meetings as quickly as possible, doing the bare minimum with CRM and reporting, with little or no time for reflection or developing mastery in their core capabilities seems to be the lot of many sales teams today.

When we rush through tasks, client …

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