Professional Jealousy?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Self Development, Self Promotion, Success

How those who shame others for selling themselves are the biggest losers

Let’s begin with a story about an excellent scientist. Someone so passionate and competent about his subject area that he happily and productively spent years studying the topic, getting to know it deeply and how it affects the world; how it is part of a broader system.

Then, with this great body of work and innovative ideas to share, he happily and proactively goes about meeting, informing and persuading key people as to the importance of his ideas and how these ideas can change things for the better.

The target audiences …

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Back to sales basics

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, CRM, Education in Sales, Marketing, Prospecting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Essentials, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Social Media

I like to keep on top of what is current, what is emerging, and what is still an idea. This is why I make time each week to do research as it helps me navigate my way around the present and into the future. However, I am finding there is so much to read, so much to get my head around, and so much to integrate into my business that it can take up a lot of time… and it only seems to be increasing.

This is why I want to get back to basics.

As I wade through all of the …

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The Flight to Ethical Selling – how the banks can avoid a royal commission

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Sales Culture

Everybody lives by selling something and so it is true for the banks and financial services businesses; however, it seems that too many people in some divisions of some of the banking, financial planning and insurance institutions have confused ethical selling with unethical selling practices. Not all banks and financial institutions, mind you, but enough of the big ones to erode trust so badly that people are baying for a royal commission.

When I first started introducing the discipline of Selling to the Australian banking sector back in early 1990’s I was met with a ‘we don’t sell’ mentality even though …

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Sales Trend 11 – Sales to Add Value to Procurement, Not Just Follow the Process

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

Sales Trend 11 from Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2017 Report is about Procurement. Guest author Ben Shute, CEO of Comprara, shares his insights.

It was 1999 when De Vincentis and Rackham (of SPIN Selling fame) wrote ‘Rethinking the Sales Force’, a book describing how the rise and rise of procurement challenged sales professionals about how best to organise business-to-business sales teams. Fast forward to 2016 and there are 15,000 people working full time in procurement in Australia, and the proportion of sales revenue that is won through competitive processes is rising year on year. …

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Why we can all benefit from thinking like a ‘freak’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Psychology, Sales Skills, Success

Steven Levitt, the co-author of Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think like a Freak and When to Rob a Bank, defines thinking like a freak as: “…putting away your moral compass and not worrying about what the answer “should” be, but focusing on what the answer really is. It means thinking hard about causality. It means going beyond the obvious to consider all the possibilities — but still being willing to accept the obvious.”

When businesses, and especially, sales teams and salespeople come across challenges, they usually try to solve them by using the same parameters and approaches they had used in past, but …

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Get more sales by aligning your sales process to the buying process

By / / Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results

In the classic Bill Murray movie Caddyshack, he tries in vain to catch a gopher (rodent) ruining the golf course. Eventually, it occurs to him that “in order to catch a gopher, you have to think like one…” It was a good movie, with good advice from Murray. And it is good advice for salespeople who want to “catch” customers: they need to think like their customers.

What this means is that salespeople have to go about learning and understanding how customers buy. Salespeople know, at all times, where their prospects are in their sales cycle. The problem is that they …

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Sales Trend 10 for 2017 – Personal Branding – The Foundation of Social Selling

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

Sales Trend 10 from Barrett’s 12 Sales trends Report for 2017 is about the relation between personal branding and social selling.

It is an interesting fact that the ‘extraordinary’ of yesterday becomes the ‘ordinary’ of today.

Have you noticed that the most extraordinary salespeople of 5 years ago are often the ordinary salespeople today—or gone. Why is this?

The world of sales has changed dramatically in the last 5 years and some selling organisations and their salespeople are not adapting fast enough. As a result, a lower percentage of salespeople are achieving their targets and vendors are struggling to grow …

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It’s time to be taken seriously – no more Harvey Weinsteins please

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Gender & Sales, Life Skills, Resilience, Wellbeing

In October 1983, I found myself in the clinical room of a middle aged medical doctor whom I was meeting for the first time. I was not a patient, I was a 21 year old medical sales representative doing her job.

He was a doctor in my sales territory. I was new to professional selling. I was on my own. Nothing unusual here except that when I came into his room and sat down, he stood up and went to lock the door then came over to me, sat down beside me and attempted to hand me a glass of whisky.

I …

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Don’t die wondering, the real secret to sales success – Part II of II: the person

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Prospecting, Resilience, Sales Skills, Solution Selling

How many times have we all been tempted to click on a link that offers us ‘the secret of sales success’ only to find a website or article that is promising a silver bullet ‘if only you do this one thing’ which doesn’t help us at all?

As I mentioned last week, the business of sales excellence is like the diet industry, full of tempting offerings that lead us nowhere fast.

It is only natural that people want simple answers to complex problems. ‘The world would be so much easier if only…’ we sigh.

However, “Explanations exist; they have existed …

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Don’t die wondering, the real secret to sales success – Part I of II: the business

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Innovation, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Pioneer, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Strategy, Success

I know, I know, I know.

How many times have we seen the ‘Secrets to Sales Success’ plastered over the internet only to be left disappointed?

Usually, these ‘secrets’, once you look into them, either leave you feeling duped because of the unethical biases they take, or you are left with lots of little bits and pieces of advice that are ok but they are not coordinated in a manner that you can manage and move forward with them.

Like the diet and wellness industries, you could spend a lifetime trying to work out what you should do to improve your chances at …

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