The vital life (& sales) skill of Reflection

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Life Skills, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Self Development, Time Management, Wellbeing

As I sit at my desk writing this article I am reflecting on the past 4-5 weeks where sitting at my desk and taking time to think, ponder, and reflect on ideas, my team, my work, our strategy, our wellbeing and so on has been few and far between. On one hand I am grateful that we are fully engaged (our work word for ‘busy’) and active with our work and clients, on the other hand I am mourning the lack of those small time outs when I can create the space to look into both the details and vast …

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Sales Trend 4 – Sales & Marketing Unite

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 4 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is Sales & Marketing Unite.

For too many years there have been various degrees of finger-pointing and strained relations between the Sales and Marketing departments, and in too many cases open hostility. The ‘us and them’ approach has kept these two important disciplines at arms’ length from each other. This undoubtedly diminishes the power and potential of their united efforts. Management has long called for sales and marketing to bury the hatchet, but the requests often lack urgency and are generally met with indifference.

With shrinking markets, micro segments, more informed buyers …

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Women in Sales Leadership: advice to my younger self

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Education in Sales, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Sales Leadership, Wellbeing

Over 2 days on 5 & 6 April 2016 I had the privilege of chairing the 2016 Women in Sales Leadership Conference in Sydney, Australia. The theme for the event was ‘Advice to my younger self’.

We had over 20 senior sales leaders from around Australia presenting to a room full of women in sales and sales leadership roles from a range of industries. We had young women in their 20’s embarking on their sales careers through to many senior sales leaders with 30+ years’ experience in sales and sales leadership.

Interestingly, unlike other sales conferences I have attended over the years, …

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The 7 differences between Selling, Marketing & Networking

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Education in Sales, Marketing, Networking

As I have stated before I am a stickler for using correct definitions when describing concepts and their elements.

In music, science, mathematics, physics and engineering we do not usually debate the definition of these constructs. We accept that a crotchet is a crotchet, a prime number is a prime number and so on. No debate.

However, in the world of business and, especially in the world of Selling, we get all sorts of definitions floating about with meanings both dubious and factual. This causes, at best, confusion and, at worst, unnecessary angst.

In the world of selling I have met too many …

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Sales Trend 3 – Selling is everybody’s business

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 3 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is Selling is everybody’s business.

For a long time businesses have been focusing on how to achieve better sales results. Organisations with varying levels of maturity and insight have embarked on many different journeys to get there. Some have been very savvy and have taken a holistic systems approach putting in place sound sales strategies, market segmentation plans underpinned by clear sales processes, standards and values that inform their sales teams. Some organisations tried other alternatives, with varied levels of success, from good training systems to silver bullet solutions that …

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Why everybody benefits from knowing when to say ‘NO’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Sales Tips, Self Development

Seth Godin is a master at providing pithy, sage advice and I couldn’t go past a recent post of his that really spells out the importance of knowing when to say NO.

His article made me recall an earlier article I wrote back on 2007 called ‘Learn to say NO’ which focused on standing up for your value and pricing and not being intimidated by bully buyers.

All of this coincided with an article in The Age newspaper this week about ‘The customer can be wrong’ highlighting the issue of employee safety around sexual harassment of staff by customers.

What’s happening …

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How do we spot new trends, drive innovation and sell better?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Innovation, Self Development

Recently, the Australian Prime Minster, Malcolm Turnbull urged and encouraged Australians to be more creative, develop new opportunities and drive innovation to grow our economy and secure a better economic future for us.

That’s all well and good but how do we spot new trends, drive innovation, and sell better so as to secure our future?

There will be many variables to consider in each of our answers to this question; however, there are three core things we need to master if we want to spot and create trends before anyone else does, if we want to get ahead of the curve, …

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Why everybody benefits from being more ‘Otherish’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills

What does being ‘Otherish’ mean?

Adam Grant, in his bestselling book Give and Take, talks about the concept of “otherish” being the opposite of selfish and different from selflessness. “Otherish” people consider both their own interests and the interests of others simultaneously; they are looking for win-win situations, as opposed to selfless people who may only consider the other and end up in lose-win setups or selfish people who look for winner-takes-all.

‘Otherish’ is all about a fair exchange of value.

Being ‘otherish’ is an important concept to understand and apply if we are to set up truly customer centric business models where …

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Why everybody benefits from knowing how to prospect

By / / Communication, Education in Sales, Prospecting, Sales Skills

Every business needs to prospect for new clients and customers, even non salespeople often need to reignite past business relationships and form new ones, internally or externally. You don’t need to be the primary salesperson or business development manager to be required to prospect well. Any call you make to another person whose attention you need to grab and focus on what you have to offer or propose is technically a prospecting call.

Prospecting is the identification and pursuit of new opportunities.

In sales, it is the pursuit of new business opportunities in either new or existing accounts.

In other …

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12 Sales Trends for 2016: Sales Trend 2 – Beware Competitor Zero

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Competition, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 2 of Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is “Beware Competitor Zero”.

Competition comes in all shapes and sizes today; direct, indirect, and disruptive; however, there is another competitor in our midst – indecision or no decision.

This sales trend is about Competitor Zero – indecision leading to procrastination and no decision.

Here and around the world we are seeing buying decisions taking a lot longer than they used to. In medium to large businesses there are also more people involved in making the buying decision, about 5.4 on average, so we are seeing decision by committee which …

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