Less IS More when it comes to Sales Planning & Market Segmentation

By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Planning, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy, Success

Less Is More when it comes to doing good strategy, sales planning and market segmentation.

As Michael Porter, Professor and ‘Father’ of Competitive Strategy (Harvard Business School), says:

  • The essence of good strategy is choosing what not to do;
  • The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you are trying to accomplish; and
  • Strategy 101 is about choices. You cannot be all things to all people. It’s about making choices, trade-offs. It’s about being deliberately different

This is the essence of good strategy, yet time and time again we see many sales teams experiencing …

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Sales Trend 10 – Storytelling, taking sales teams beyond features and benefits

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

Guest Author: Rishad Sukhia, CEO, Creative Agency Brightlabs, Melbourne, Australia

Sales trend 10 from our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about storytelling.

We all grew up hearing and sharing stories through childhood and adulthood – they help us learn, develop and, above all, they entertain and inspire us. Brands today are increasingly incorporating storytelling into their sales and marketing strategies in order to resonate with their customers.

This sales trend is focused on the increasing importance of the art and science of storytelling in sales and marketing, taking our sales teams beyond presenting features and benefits.

What is brand storytelling?

Whilst the terms …

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7 things you need to know about the Craft of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Resilience, Sales Essentials, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training, Solution Selling
We can agree:

Everybody lives by selling something – whether it be ideas, initiatives, visions, products, services or solutions.

Selling is ubiquitous – ever present in our daily lives, internally and externally. 

Selling is the vehicle that allows opportunity to flourish and people to prosper.

Nothing happens until something gets sold.

However:

As ever present as selling is in our daily lives, most people learn how to sell by default, not design.

Often thrown in the deep end, they work it out as they go, feeling their way by trial and error, hoping to be on the right track.

This means that more people fail …

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Unethical Selling, not Selling, should be on trial at the Banking Royal Commission

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Competition, Education in Sales, Ethics & Values, Selling Better

With the handing down of the Interim Report from the Banking Royal Commission, Commissioner Hayne was scathing in his assessment of the banking finance sector, especially the big 4 banks and large insurance and investment firms, such as AMP, for enabling their cultures of greed to flourish at the expense of customers’ wellbeing, principled and ethical business practice.

Commissioner Hayne said the key questions the commission had to answer were why such poor conduct had occurred and how to stop it happening again.

He added that, in many cases, the answer to the first question was obvious.

“Too often, the answer seems to …

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Sales Trend 9 – Personal Branding is a must have asset

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Social Media, Social Sales

Key terms: social media, consistency, engagement, results

Guest author: Josh Schmalenbach

Sales Trend 9 from our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about social selling.

As technology and the internet have evolved, our access to information has also vastly grown. Never before has it been so easy to find out so much about a product or a person.

With a simple Google search, one can find pages of information regarding someone’s career, achievements, education, and even what they have shared online.

This ease of access to data has made the buying process significantly easier and less risky for everyone involved. The …

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The 5 Dimensions for Sales Alignment, Harmony & Success

By / / Assessments, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Success

As CEOs and sales leaders, we understand that there are many factors that make for a successful sales strategy, operating system and sales team in the competitive, complex, variable world of selling. Leading a sales team and operation is like bringing together an orchestra where there is a fine line between success and failure, being harmonious or out of tune.

As sales professionals, we can often find ourselves either ‘firing on all cylinders’, ‘kicking goals’ and ‘getting the job done’ or feeling ‘not quite right’, ‘out of sorts’, or ‘off our game’ and often not really sure as …

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4 Questions to Test if your Sales & Prospecting Tactics are Ethical

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Prospecting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Selling Better
  • Do other people stand to gain from your sales tactics and actions?
  • Do your sales tactics and actions have a positive influence on your own and others’ well-being and self-esteem?
  • Do your sales tactics and actions move you and your customer closer to your respective short- and long-term goals?
  • Would most people approve of how you prospect for new business and sell?

    • If each of us can honestly answer “yes” to these questions, then it would appear that our sales and prospecting efforts are underpinned by sound ethics and behaviours and set up to deliver a fair exchange of value for both buyer and …

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    This didn’t happen in my time …

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Opportunity, Optimism, Selling Better, Success

    Today it happens it is the same
    to be decent or a traitor
    To be an ignorant, wise, a pickpocket,
    a generous person or a swindler
    All is the same, nothing is better
    They are the same, a fool
    and a professor
    There are no failing grades or hierarchy,
    the immoral people have caught up with us.
    If one lives in deceit
    and another, in their ambition, steals.
    It’s the same if it’s a priest,
    a mattress maker, a king of clubs,
    a rascal or a stowaway.

    Currently this seems to be the world we live in, and everywhere we turn, …

    This didn’t happen in my time … Read Post »

    Why a Fair Exchange of Value goes beyond exchanging money for goods

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Ethics & Values, Sales Relationships, Selling Better

    At its simplest, selling and buying is about a transactional exchange of a service or product for money.

    For simple, low cost, transactional sales, where we may have little vested interest in the other person or company providing that product, we may not reflect as deeply on our buying interactions with them. However, if we discover that we have been ‘ripped off’ by paying too much for something, or unfairly treated, or discriminated against, and so on, we are more likely to become highly invested in the concept of fair exchange of value.

    Why? Because as human beings, we do not like …

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    Sales Trend 6: Moving CX & HX – really it’s all about people now

    By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy

    Sales Trend 6 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2018 is about the ‘human experience’ in businesses and sales.

    The terms Customer Experience and Customer Centric have been around for some time. These terms are now referred to in shorthand as CX. Now a new term is emerging – HX, the Human Experience.

    What does all this mean? Aren’t they the same thing?

    This sales trend explores the terms CX and HX and helps put into perspective the old and the new when it comes to creating a competitive winning edge in sales and business.

    Let’s look at some definitions first:

    In commerce, customer …

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