The power of Sales Process Maps to deliver best sales practice

By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Process Maps, Sales Talent

Most new salespeople are thrown in the deep end when it comes to sales induction.

“Here go out with Josephine, our best sales person and be like her.”

Most salespeople, in general, are given no articulated sales process which means there’s nothing specific to be coached or trained to or to follow.

In sales teams we often have the blind leading the blind when it comes to achieving sales best practice.

Why? Because most businesses do not have an articulated sales process map(s) for their salespeople to follow. They treat selling as an action not as a profession with clearly defined …

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Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Self Promotion

On 19-20 April I had the privilege of chairing the 2-day conference: Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success in Sydney where we had over 100 women and 4 men attend.

The attendees were given the opportunity to hear from and interact with 16 of Australia’s leading female sales leaders and three male sales leaders and explore how they have created and charted their own visions of success.

Key topics discussed included:

  • Setting goals and planning for career growth
  • Defining your WHY?
  • Don’t let career breaks pause your progression
  • Finding the right Sponsors and Mentors and how to involve men on your career journey
  • Establishing your …

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2017 Sales Trend 4 – Learn to Embrace and Manage Complexity

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 4 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report explains why to have extraordinary sales teams and operations, we have to embrace complexity.

As John Lord[1] said “Perhaps a greater understanding of what I am saying might be obtained by exercising a greater willingness to think more deeply”. 

Regrettably, most organisations ONLY view their sales operations as tactical linear functions of the value chain—and while sales teams need to get up close and personal on a tactical level with customers, if sales is only viewed through the overly simplistic lens of “foot soldiers selling products” then …

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The Science of Persuasion

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Sales Psychology

Forget dictatorships, command and control style approaches, persuasion has a lot more going for it when it comes to better sales, better relationships, better team work, better business outcomes and long term change in actions and behaviour.

The term persuasion is most commonly associated with sales people. And there’s a good reason for that. If we consider the Business Dictionary definition of persuasion, “process aimed at changing a person’s (or a group’s) attitude or behavior toward some event, idea, object, or other person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination of them”, it …

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Four tips to spot business opportunities.

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations

How many people in your business are in contact with customers on a daily basis?

How many of them would be presented with new business opportunities but wouldn’t know what they look like or what to do with them?

Lately, we are hearing a common theme coming from CEOs, sales leaders, and partners at professional services firms: “My team cannot spot a business opportunity even when it’s right in front of them”

These leaders are not looking for everyone in their team to be able to sell or even pursue opportunities. All they want is for these people to be able to spot …

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Sales Trend 3 – Mapping the Buying–Selling-Delivery Process

By / / Sales Trends

Sales Trend 3 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is Mapping the Buying-Selling-Delivery Process.

If you want your sales team and your business to move from ordinary to extraordinary when it comes to client engagement and better sales results, it pays to do what the smart companies are doing and map your entire buying-selling-delivery process—the client value chain—and make sure everyone in your organisation understands what it is, where they fit in and how they all support the buying-selling-delivery client experience.

Sales Trend 3 points out that in the hyper-competitive and transparent business world of today we need everyone …

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Sales Trend 2 – The Silent Majority

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Talent, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 2 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about the new salesperson stereotype.

The history of sales methodologies and sales people is full of twists and turns. With a few excellent –or at least well-intentioned– ways of selling and many others that are the complete opposite.

There was a time when the salesperson was the only one with information about new products—from the end of the 19th century to mid-20th century; they were the experts and customers were in their hands when it came to make a buying decision. This produced a situation where many sales …

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The difference between Sales and Marketing Segmentation

By / / Marketing, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Strategy

To segment or not to segment that is the question.

For too long sales has allowed marketing to dictate what a segment should be. But the simple reality is that sales segmentation and marketing segmentation are substantially different. In fact, it is these very differences that make sales strategy so different from marketing and even corporate strategies.

Marketing defines segments as “A group of people that share one or more demographic and / or psychographic characteristics”.

However, sales people deal with people, not groups.

Traditional segmentation usually takes into account how attractive a segment is to a company, and how competitive …

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Selling Better Case Study: How to do it properly

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Sales Strategy

A Barrett Selling Better Case Study

Here is a brief snap shot of the current results of a major Selling Better project we started with one of our clients in 2015: 60 salespeople plus managers in a mid-tier speciality banking and finance company, Australia.

  • 130% of sales budget year to date
  • Sales pipeline confirmed business out to 24 weeks versus previous 14 week benchmark
  • Sales team realignment to match higher value customer market opportunities
  • Sales team finding and winning larger, more profitable sales with better quality clients
  • Customer retention (of the right kind of customers) at 100%
  • The CVP (customer value proposition) has been adopted across the …

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HOPE is not a Sales Strategy

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Strategy, Strategy

Whilst hope isn’t a sales strategy, without the right ingredients failure is certain

The protocol for developing a sales strategy is fundamentally different to that used for other business strategies. Even the thinking that drives a sales strategy is somewhat different to that which drives marketing strategies. Here are a few guidelines:

  • The golden rule that underpins any sales strategy is knowledge. By learning as much as one can about the market, buyers and the alternatives buyers have, sales is able to expand its own thinking beyond its present paradigm, in the process defining a clearer, more focused role in …

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