What if we sell better instead of only selling more?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Environment & Sustainability, Sales Results, Success, Sustainability & Environment

What if we aimed to sell better instead of focusing on only selling more?

At risk of giving every sales manager and business leader a coronary with this question, especially if we are running behind on our sales targets, I would like us to consider the following proposition.

‘Strive not to be the best company in the world, but the best company FOR the world’

What if we took this approach to business?

This is the philosophy of BCorps which is encouraging the proliferation of a new type of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. They …

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What to do about badly informed buyers

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Procurement

‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ is an 18th century saying that means a small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they are more expert than they really are.

How true in today’s society.

For example, the medical profession has warned people about their penchant for searching the Internet for symptoms of the ailments they feel that they have. Worse still is looking for the remedy without getting professional advice in some mistaken belief that if it appears as a result of a Google search, it must be true.

It’s not that the information is essentially wrong – though …

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How to avoid the ‘Race to the Bottom’ & mutual destruction

By / / Procurement, Sales Relationships, Sales Research, Sales Trends

The recent news about Coles and Woolworths being taken to task by the ACCC for their questionable dealings with suppliers has highlighted a major problem plaguing customer-supplier relationships.

Barrett’s first Sales Trend for 2015 is ‘Race to the Bottom’ because of the drastic impact this unsustainable pricing strategy is having on sales and buyer relationships. Edward Rayner, a procurement specialist gave us important insights into this major issue and presented some important questions and strategies sales teams can employ to help avoid mutual destruction.

Here are some of Rayner’s findings.

A customer-supplier engagement strategy that …

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12 Sales Trends Reports for 2015 – Transparency and The Middle Path – The Summary

By / / Sales Culture, Sales Research, Sales Tips, Sales Trends

The theme for Barrett’s Sales Trends for 2015 is ‘Transparency and the Middle Path’. This theme stems from the idea of everything in moderation and a new openness whether by choice or not.

Over the years, salespeople and organisations have often focused solely on a single idea, shifting from one to the other as strategies proved ineffective. More recently, there has been a realisation that a more balanced approach (where a number of different aspects are given equal weighting) is potentially more appropriate and more effective for their businesses, especially in an increasingly complex world. This makes sense; however, it isn’t …

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Getting your sales perspective in 2015

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Sales Psychology, Sales Skills, Value Based Selling

Perspective Taking is a critical life skill that can serve us well no matter what role we are in.

Perspective Taking is also a vital sales skill if we want to develop viable relationships with clients, influence people to consider and buy our offerings, grow sales and lead successful sales careers.

What is Perspective Taking?
Perspective Taking is the act of viewing a situation, or understanding a concept, from an alternate point-of-view. Perspective Taking is the process of temporarily suspending one’s own point-of-view in order to view a situation as someone else might. This process does not necessitate any form of affinity, …

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20 years of improving sales teams & operations. What’s changed?

By / / Collaboration, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The 9th January 2015 marks 20 years in business for Barrett Consulting Group.

Twenty years of helping companies, sales leaders and their salespeople improve their sales operations and their sales capabilities.

Twenty years of helping salespeople and buyers have better, more mutually rewarding experiences, setting a fairer exchange of value.

As I moved toward this 20th anniversary, I started to muse upon what the sales world was like 20 years ago, compared to what it is like now. Here are just some of my initial musings and observations.

A lot has changed in the sales world over the last 20 years, some changes for …

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Sales Trend 12 – The Enlightened Sales Person

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Communication, Sales Relationships, Sales Trends, Uncategorized

As the year comes to a close so do we present the 12th and final Sales Trend for 2014. This sales trend is seeing a new kind of salesperson emerging in our midst. Not common by any stretch of the imagination, but appearing in businesses slowly but surely. Smart companies are becoming aware that they need a new kind of salesperson, especially at the higher levels of business. The days of the flashy, aggressive, all talking ‘pitch master’ , or ‘you’re my mate’ schmoozer are fading fast from most industries with only …

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Does ‘Gratitude’ belong in B2B sales?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Sales Relationships

I have been thinking about how salespeople and others who are responsible for bringing in new business to their organisations feel when they get heartfelt thanks and feedback from their clients for a job well done.

The sort of feedback that actually tells the salesperson that they really made a difference to that client’s situation, life or business; that the client was grateful to have worked with them because they are better off with them than without them; that the client really appreciated the efforts that the salesperson made to make the most of the situation.

I know how I feel when …

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Top 13 Sales Issues for businesses in 2014

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Results

As we get close to our celebration of 20 years in business we thought we would share with you the most common and critical sales problems that are affecting sales teams large and small, across all sorts of markets and industries in 2014. Here they are:

  • Businesses not making sales quota overall
  • Not enough salespeople making quota
  • Win/lose ratio unacceptably low
  • Deals taking too long to close
  • Leads/sales ratio too low
  • Not getting enough client meetings
  • Margins being squeezed
  • Chasing poorly qualified leads
  • Not engaging with decision makers
  • Salespeople not able to engage effectively at C level
  • Salespeople not understanding the client’s perspective
  • Too much discounting
  • Losing deals on price

    • The list contents may …

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    Why the world of Selling is changing forever

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Education in Sales, Sales Trends, Value Based Selling

    Hanging on the old Product Selling paradigm is precisely the way to go out of business in the 21th Century.
    You can see it happening as organisations everywhere undergo breathtaking changes. Their products are changing. Their markets are changing. Their customers are changing. Their leadership management philosophies are changing. Their values are changing. Their focus is changing.

    Now, more than ever before the accepted ways of doing business are shifting. Old institutions are crashing and dying. Trusted names of yesterday will not live to see the future. Why? Because many of them failed to keep pace with changing consumer demands, values …

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