Cracking the Sales Myth of Hunters & Farmers

By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent

Many so called “experts” claim that there are two types of salespeople – Hunters and Farmers.

Salespeople, so these experts claim, are either one or the other. Consequently they fit one sales position or another. In our experience, having spent decades working with salespeople at every level in a wide variety of segments, salespeople don’t fit into these neat stereotypes.

The myth about Hunters and Farmers in Selling has been overtaken by a business reality.

Before we crack the myth let’s take a look at where the concept came from in the first place.

The person credited with starting the concept …

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Survival of the Adaptive P3: Use Effective Sales Metrics

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Performance Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Strategy

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

Part 3 is all about using effective metrics to track sales

In an ideal world, the financial returns and the ability of the sales force to generate business at respectable margins would be precisely calculated, and deciding the effectiveness of any sales strategy would be simple. In reality however, there are multiple, and usually imperfect ways to measure most …

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Survival of the Adaptive P2: Develop a well-informed sales force

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Leadership, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

Part 2 is all about developing a well-informed sales force

A decade ago, when traditional product-pushing sales were all that mattered, most sales leaders employed and trained well motivated salespeople – usually with what they referred to as “industry experience”. Today that is hardly enough!

Many of these sales leaders now confess to being less certain that industry experience or having …

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Survival of the Adaptive P1: focus on changing buying habits

By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Social Sales, Solution Selling

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is often misquoted as being ‘the survival of the fittest’ when in fact it is ‘the survival of the most adaptive’. And that is how we need to be if we want to survive and thrive in these ever changing markets – adaptive.

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

One of the ways sales teams can adapt and really get ahead of the curve …

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How should sales teams adapt to changes in the marketplace?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Strategy

It is a harsh reality – product demand and brand scores are down. Some contributing factors to this decline are: bad experiences with retailers or suppliers, poor responses from intermediaries, mediocre service levels, automated procurement practices, stripped down pricing, and an increased number of competitors with products that are just as good and brand names that are just as well respected.

In the face of this growing complexity and a challenging global economic environment, salespeople face continuing demands to meet higher sales quotas. And this in markets most likely suffering from already squeezed margins, and buyers who are sceptical and reluctant …

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If you’re not selling, you’re supporting someone who is

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing

Last week I wrote about ‘making promises you can keep and keeping the promises you make’ and when the rhetoric and reality do not coincide thus leaving customers disappointed at best and downright cynical and mad at worst.

No business is perfect that’s for sure; however, if the intention of the business and its people is to genuinely help and serve customers for a fair exchange of value (whatever that is deemed to be) then everyone in the company needs to be trained -in what is relevant to each role: how to sell, serve and/or communicate- to a …

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Make promises you can keep & keep the promises you make

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Marketing

You may have noticed in recent times that many companies, especially larger organisations, are focusing their marketing and advertising efforts on trying to portray themselves as caring and empathic to whatever cause they think is important to us; the ‘we understand you and what you are going through’ approach; trying to talk to us in a personal, friendly manner like they are our closest friends, and your call is ‘really’ important to us ‘trust me’ tones.

Well, I am not buying it at all. And neither are many other people. We’ve had enough.

Why? Because the rhetoric very rarely matches the reality …

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Sales Trend 7 – Beyond Sales KPIs

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Trends

The 2015 Sales Trend 7 – Beyond Sales KPIs see our focus shifting to how we can get closer to the moments of truth and measure sales effectiveness in a complex world. In a nutshell, this trend is showing leadership moving from a deficiency orientation (i.e. performance management when things go wrong) to a competency orientation (i.e. coaching people to achieve their best performance). It is important to note that this trend also requires a mindset shift amongst the managers involved in such a transformation.

Most companies at some stage in their history have struggled with identifying the …

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The key to opening more sales opportunities

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Networking

The advent of the digital revolution and social networks had a huge impact in the number of people we are connected to. Now, I encourage us all to take a moment to think about the people we know personally. Imagine how many people that involves – just one degree away from us. Then think again about 2 or 3 degrees away and the numbers are astronomical.

Many of us have heard about the 6 degrees of separation concept which says that we are all only 6 people away from everyone else in the world. Well, with digital networks …

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Why using Sales Intelligence helps you close more sales

By / / CRM, Sales Results, Sales Tips

Whilst many salespeople complain of their frustrations with getting an initial appointment with new prospects, it’s the next step – converting these initial buyer-seller conversations into a presentation opportunity – that should be more of a concern. Research from CSO Insights shows an alarming erosion in the ability to move a sale from an initial conversation with around only 48% of these being converted. This is down from a high of around 58%.

The study on sales intelligence by CSO says the reason companies are struggling to move prospects past initial conversations is that today’s ultra-informed buyers want …

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