2015 Sales Trend 11 – The rise of the freelancer

By / / Sales Trends

The Sales Trend 11 of our 12 Sales Trends for 2015 is The Rise of the Freelancer.

Over the past few years there has been a dissonance between two discourses happening at the same time. On the one hand we hear continuously from friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues that the job market is very difficult and more and more people are struggling to find fulfilling work or any kind of work at all. On the other hand, companies and organisations in general say that they can’t find the right talent that they need. How can these two happen …

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Does your sales force match what you are selling?

By / / Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

One size does not fit all when it comes to building the right type of sales force for what you are selling; yet many professionals treat selling as a homogeneous skill set, expecting salespeople to be able to sell anything.

Or another fatal mistake is to assume that industry experience and knowledge alone is all that is required. For too many years sales managers have had industry experience as their number one selection criteria for salespeople. The problem with this is that they usually get the same old people with the same old ideas and the same old results.

The fact is …

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How to find your competitive edge and compete successfully

By / / Business Acumen, Competition, Education in Sales, Sales Tips

Product differentiation is getting harder, Me2 products are flooding the markets, quality is being commoditised, and as a result margins are being squeezed and value is at risk of being shed if we don’t know how to articulate the real value we deliver beyond product and price and demonstrate our competitive edge.

With so much choice and competitors fighting for our clients’ attention, it is critical that we find and define our competitive edge.

How do we define our competitive edge?

That depends on what we want to deliver to our customers and how we want to run our businesses.

Today, …

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‘How we sell around here’ equals sales success

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Management, Sales Research, Sales Results

Many years ago, and for many years, when salespeople were recruited into the sales team of a business they would be schooled in ‘how we sell around here’.

New salespeople regardless of their experience would be introduced to the business’ sales plan, target markets and customer segments, the product range, the current sales processes, tools and templates, and so on. Sales managers would put these new recruits through their paces making sure that they knew how to sell.

Now, I admit some of the sales processes these new sales recruits were schooled in where not always ideal or even ethical, but the …

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Sales Trend 10 – Oops! I’m in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Trends

Barrett’s Sales Trend 10 for 2015 is ‘Oops! I’m in sales’.

The general stereotypical view of selling and salespeople has remained relatively stable over the past 50 or so years, with the most commonly associated words and concepts being fairly specific (i.e. ‘used car salesman’) and/or negative (i.e. ‘pushy’, ‘sleazy’, ‘dishonest’)[1]. Even by people working in the sales profession, these schemas are often what they refer to when asked to describe sales. However, very slowly, this is starting to change.

Many companies and sales people are actively trying to change these stereotypes by promoting more positive behaviours …

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Sales Systems Thinking, the key to effective sales strategy and operations

By / / Business Acumen, Sales Strategy

As I have previously written one of our biggest issues in running effective sales operations and executing effective sales strategies is the persistence of ‘point’ or ‘silver bullet’ solutions that mislead and distract. If you recall, a point solution solves one particular problem without regard to related issues and unfortunately, point solutions often don’t deliver meaningful or sustainable results.

That is why we need to embrace Systems Thinking as the way to lead and manage sales teams and operations.

What is Systems Thinking?

Systems Thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system’s constituent …

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Sales Trend 9 – Back to the Village

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Environment & Sustainability, Sales Trends, Sustainability & Environment

Barrett’s Sales Trend 9 for 2015 is ‘Back to the village’.

As globalisation became more and more prominent, Australian consumers in turn, became excited about being able to purchase items from all over the world. Suddenly they were exposed to a wider variety and range of products than ever before, and could boast about owning items from across the globe. As the novelty of “worldly” products began to wane, and the economic impact of the import/export markets were felt more locally, people started to shift back to purchasing Australian made products.

In recognition of this, the Australian government launched …

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Sales Trend 8 – Unearthing the Real Neuroscience in Sales – We cannot read minds yet

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Neuroscience, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 8 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2015 is about “neuroselling”.

Recently, there has been a shift from economic models to emotion-based or psychological models of selling. The shift to emotional, psychological, and scientific models has been occurring across other areas of business for many years, so it comes as no surprise that it is now happening in sales. However, rather than talking about emotion-based models, people are jumping straight to scientific terminology and talking about using neuroscience in sales.

Cognitive neuroscience (a branch of neuroscience, which is the study of the nervous system as a whole) …

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Lessons for Sales from ‘Good to Great’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Talent, Self Development, Success

Jim Collins (author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t”) stimulates a thought that many sales managers should be asking themselves right now: “What makes good salespeople great?”

At Barrett we work with sales managers and salespeople every day, and recently asked that question of a number of people in both categories. The response wasn’t that startling. What Barrett learned is that few sales managers, and even fewer salespeople, could actually define what “great” selling actually means. This has confirmed Barrett’s findings that many salespeople let themselves down because they …

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