Curiosity – A Foundation to Sale Mastery

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Success

Let’s start with a question: What is the most important quality of highly successful salespeople? This question is often on the mind of anyone looking to sell well. There is much speculation about what this elusive quality actually is.  The truth is that there are many traits that make for highly successful salespeople , but the number one quality that makes top sales performers outstanding is…

 their desire and dedication to engage in self-appraisal and continuous learning.   

We have not met a successful sales person yet who doesn’t want to know how to be …

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Marketing (as we know it) is dead

By / / Marketing

The final Sales Trend for 2013 is ”Marketing (as we know it) is dead” but you probably already know that given the rapid changes happening in our markets.

Traditional marketing, i.e. advertising, PR, branding and corporate communications, has become little more than an expensive, very often valueless mass communications methodology and has failed. Marketing has been at death’s door for well over a decade. It’s just that marketing professionals don’t want to recognise the reality!

There are three pointers that prove this:

  • Buyers are no longer paying much attention to marketing messages. Studies show …

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    Salespeople In The Deep End (Again)

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Skills, Sales Training

    Last week I received a call from a woman (let’s call her Tracy for the purpose of this article) desperately seeking help on how to sell.  Tracy had been in her role for 5 months and all that time had not received any guidance, advice, coaching or support from her managers on how to sell her products or who to sell them to. She had never been in a sales role before and did not work in the vicinity of the head office.  She was out there on her own …

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    Going mobile – the rise of Smartphones in Sales

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Meetings, Social Media, Social Sales

    In December 2012, we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each trend. This month we are focusing on the Sales Trend “Going mobile – the rise of smartphones in sales”. As Australia deals with the challenge of becoming more globally competitive, organisations are making greater use of both increased mobility as well as tele-conferencing using smartphone technology.   Anecdotal research is showing that smartphones are giving salespeople an edge in a number of ways. This sales …

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    Some industries just don’t get prospecting

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Education in Sales, Prospecting

    I have been prospecting for new business on a regular and consistent basis since 1985.

    For my team and prospecting is a way of life. We could never have developed our respective businesses and reputations without the vital business skill of prospecting.  We both confess that in the early days we did not enjoy many of the aspects of prospecting but we learned how to prospect successfully and we understand that prospecting is like oxygen – it fuels the fire of sales. Without prospects to speak to we cannot do business.

    That is why I find it very interesting that certain industries …

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    It’s HOW you think, not WHAT you think

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

    What type of salespeople do you want on your team? What type of salesperson do you want to be?

    Do you want salespeople who do as they are told or salespeople who think for themselves about possibility, finding new opportunities, looking at different ways to address problems that are still effective, if not more profitable than the current ways, etc.?

    We cannot deny that we live in a complex world where outputs are often unpredictable. I hear sales leaders crying out for ‘smart intelligent’ salespeople.  And I know customers want to engage with …

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    Hidden sales coaching moments

    By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Uncategorized

    The value of sales coaching cannot be ignored. Various studies across the last 30+ years have demonstrated that regular coaching improves recall and retention of learning from sales classroom training at between 80-95%, as compared to 13% with no follow up coaching.  Coaching helps improve sales performance by around 20% when compared to a non coaching environment. Yet, many sales managers maintain they don’t have the time to perform coaching, the most important of all sales leadership tasks.  Go figure! One …

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    Customer Experience Management (CX) will replace CRMs

    By / / CRM, Social Media

    More products and services are becoming commoditised. Price differentiation is less of a sustainable advantage. Smarter buyers demand a faster response and expect greater value. In this kind of market it’s no longer good enough to simply satisfy customers. Successful organisations are those that delight their customers. That means that companies are going to migrate from merely managing relationships to understanding their customers’ entire experience with the organisation. In December 2012, we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each trend. This month we are …

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    The History of Sales Methodologies

    By / / Business Acumen, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Research

    Have you ever wondered just how many sales methodologies are out there and which ones work and which ones don’t?

    Maybe you haven’t given much conscious thought to this subject but then again maybe you have.  Either way, if you are in sales or run a sales team or business and want to be more effective and successful it’s critical that you know what sales methodology will work best for you and your customers.

    Unfortunately, the business world has been littered with more dubious sales methodologies than there are effective ones. Our business, at Barrett, is to …

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