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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How to create a new sales routine that delivers results

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Training

We all know that creating a better sales team, better sales culture, better sales leadership and better sales strategy that delivers better sales results does not happen by attending the occasional sales training workshop. Though it doesn’t stop sales leaders from opting for the ‘quick fix’ annual sales workshop to show that they are ‘doing something’ to drive better sales results. In short, these leaders would be better off doing nothing and saving their money, time and effort.

Metaphorically speaking, the sales training workshop (or 1-5 days depending on how much money you have to spend) is the tail of the …

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12 Sales Trends for 2016: Sales Trend 1 – Beyond Profit Erosion

By / / Sales Research, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 1 of Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is “Beyond Profit Erosion”.

After decades of revenue and profit growth markets are no longer what they used to be. The current situation of profit erosion has been decades in the making with a combination of factors including:

  • Low interest rates and the abundance of cheap money creating the conditions for growth mainly through Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Cost cutting to reduce duplication and redundancies and grow profits
  • Technology and automation having taken over many labour intensive processes
  • Buyers’ stripping apart of complex offers into their individual parts thus diminishing or dismissing the …

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How to sell better in uncertain times

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips

You could be forgiven for starting off 2016 in a rather pessimistic manner given all the ‘doom and gloom’ being spread about economic growth issues, the decline of share markets across the globe and talk of another GFC. Don’t get me wrong, we need to be vigilant and able to adapt and, even if everything that is being predicted turns out to be true, we still need to keep moving forward and seek out the right opportunities to focus on.

In short, how do we keep our head when everyone else around us is losing theirs?

There are those of us who …

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David Bowie – a role model for all entrepreneurs

By / / Business Acumen, Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Life Skills, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Self Promotion, Success

The sad passing of David Bowie this last week has brought a huge wave of emotional outpouring from many parts of the world including myself. I grew up with David Bowie. He has been in my life as long as I can remember. He was, I admit, my most favourite  music star of all. I loved everything about him and remember him with much love and affection. I have the books and albums, I have been to his concerts, and most recently attended that wonderful exhibition ‘David Bowie is’ which tracked his life and highlighted his contributions to music, art, …

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Clarity & Purpose – a recap of 2015

By / / Role Clarity, Sales Leadership

This is our last sales blog for 2015,  our first blog for 2016 will be out the week of January 11th.

For our clients and the team at Barrett, 2015 has been the year of clarity and purpose with many of our clients being able to put in place sound sales strategies, sales operations frameworks and development programs to set up their sales teams for success in 2016 and beyond.

Not happy dealing with the status quo, these smart business leaders have been looking at how they can transition their sales teams and businesses from being:

  • product driven to ideas and solutions driven
  • individualistic …

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12 Sales Trends for 2016 – Less is More

By / / Sales Trends

What happens when we have so much information that it is impossible to even decide what to read? When we have so many things to do that we are rarely at one place at one time for more than a few minutes? We constantly check our phones, computers or tablets. We are online and connected 24/7. We have an overload of information, stuff, processes, stress… There’s a reason why ‘de?cluttering’ businesses are growing in number around the world. People are seeking help to go back to basics, to a clearer and simpler life, with less stuff.

Organisations are run by people …

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