Shrinking Product Lifecycles

By / / Uncategorized

The scale of change in the last 100 years is vast. We have gone from the horse to the space shuttle; from Morse code to smartphones. It has been pointed out that in the last decade, as a result of the digital revolution we have experienced 100 years of change in 10 years and are likely to experience 1,000 years of change over this century.  You don’t have to look far to see that almost every aspect of our lives has changed and the business world has changed as well.

“Shrinking Product Lifecycles was voted the eighth most important sales trend …

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A seismic shift in the way we sell

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Sales Leadership

If you were looking for things to settle down and a return to the good old days of selling in 2012 and beyond think again. We’re never going back. It’s now time to adapt and forge a new path for sellingin your business.

Selling is now everybody’s business and everybody lives by selling something with ‘A Seismic shift in the way we sell’ voted the seventh most important sales trend for 2012 fromThe 12 Sales Trends of 2012by our readers.

The way we sell and the way we do business …

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Solution Selling Isn’t as Dead as Some People Thought!

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, salespeople had a clearly defined role. They called on prospective customers, asked a lot of questions in an attempt to understand their customer’s needs, and in many instances they inadvertently helped their customers crystalise their thinking and clarify their needs. At that time salespeople controlled the sales process and comfortably directed their buyers. And buyers were happy to be led because they didn’t know any better.

Back in the 1970’s salespeople had an important role to play in providing …

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What is Sales Enablement?

By / / Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Pioneer

The term ‘Sales Enablement’ has emerged in recent times as a hot topic in the world of sales, however it can have as many interpretations as there are sales teams which leave people feeling somewhat confused about what it really means and entails. Here are some people interpretations from online sales forums:

  • Sales enablement” means being given the tools to sell… simple as that…
  • A practice / culture of telling the client what is truthful and deliverable so that an informed buying decision is committed to by a money input from the buyer, this is effective sales enablement.
  • Sales enablement is strategic, but …

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Why Sales doesn’t have its rightful place at the boardroom table?

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Pioneer, Sales Training, Self Development

The 8th August 2012 was a milestone for Professional Salespeople around Australia: until that day there had been no officially recognised benchmark for professional selling at tertiary level. Whereas Finance, Marketing, Production, Engineering, IT, Business Administration, Research & Design, Human Resources, Logistics, Procurement and even Entrepreneurship all have recognized tertiary qualifications, Professional Business Selling is the last role in the Value Chain to be officially recognised in this space. So here we are – It has taken over 100 years for Selling to make it on the Australian Tertiary Curriculum.

Here’s a speech given …

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Sales on the University agenda? – The final results

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Leadership, Sales Research

Sales has been excluded from the academic landscape, until now. Barrett is one of the first consultancies to ask the question: Should selling be studied at degree level at University?

Why?

Based on Barrett’s long standing involvement in sales and the development of sales professionalism, we wanted to fully understand how people think and feel about the profession of selling not being studied at Australian universities and business schools and how strongly they felt about its inclusion.

Specifically, Barrett wanted to delve into the perceptual reputation of the profession of selling within our communities and the “usefulness” of having sales qualifications at …

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Brand your Salespeople

By / / Brand & Reputation, Marketing, Strategy, Uncategorized

Have you ever asked your salespeople what your company’s brand means? Chances are you will get different answers from different people – and chances are none of their answers will be entirely correct either. In spite of the investment many companies make on developing and promoting their brands to their customers, little is done to build the brand integrity internally. As a result there is often a disconnect between what a company promises to its customers and what the salespeople are saying.

Branding (amongst many things) is designed to stimulate an emotional expectation. Armed with the feelings, stimulated …

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100m Prospecting Sprint. On your marks. Get set. Prospect!

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Prospecting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership

Prospecting is the oxygen that fuels the sales fire. It is the ignition point that allows us to get in front of prospective buyers. Great sales people like great athletes do not leave prospecting to chance. They make sure that making prospecting sales calls features regularly in their weekly sales activities. Many experienced sales people make sure they do two or three 2 hour blocks of prospecting every week: calling on both new and existing accounts looking for new business opportunities. By doing this they make sure that they always have viable, …

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Are you wasting valuable selling time?

By / / Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results, Uncategorized, Wellbeing

When we employ salespeople we expect somehow that they will be selling nearly 100% of the time, however the truth is most salespeople are lucky if they get to sell 40% of the time. What we mean by this is that many salespeople spend more time in administrative non selling duties and travel than actually selling.

So when it comes to sales productivity and performance, many companies could dramatically improve their sales results by removing the obstacles that keep their salespeople …

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Customer Satisfaction & Retention Booster

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Marketing, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Success

It is five to ten times easier to keep a customer we have than to get a new one – so taking customer satisfaction and retention seriously should be serious business. We already have the most powerful marketing tool to boost customer satisfaction and increase customer retention, as well as improve employee morale and develop new products and services that are exactly what our customers want and need. The problem is that most companies don’t use it.

There is no more useful tool in our marketing armoury than our front-line sales and service people. …

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