Are you really listening or just waiting to speak?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Mindful selling, Wellbeing

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf… – Native American Proverb How long do we actually listen to another person before we start interrupting? How quickly do our own thoughts take over and we start thinking about what question to ask or what we need to say in reply even before they’ve finished speaking? Do we find ourselves interrupting the person to give our own opinion or finish their sentences before they are finished? If this sounds like you, then you’re not listening you are just waiting to speak and as the Native American Proverb above says, if we …

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Stop Throwing our Salespeople and Sales Managers into the Deep End

By / / Education in Sales, Role Clarity, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Training, Success

Isn’t it about time we stop throwing our sales people and sales managers in the deep end and expecting them to swim – or sell and lead with no support or training in this case? Isn’t it about time that we had frank conversations with our potential recruits about what sales and sales manager roles really entail and make sure our recruits really do have the skills, mindset and knowledge to take on the …

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The Difference Between Selling and Negotiating

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Mindful selling, Negotiation, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Success

Many people, especially sales people, often share the mistaken belief that Negotiation forms part of every sale which is not true. We often hear ‘my people need to be able to negotiate’ when upon further inspection they first need to learn how to sell. The reason many rely so much on negotiating is that their initial sales job was a poor effort. They neglected to properly establish the clients’ real priorities and needs and didn’t demonstrate how they can help the customer achieve results; financially as well as via their products, services, knowledge or intellectual …

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4 rules to best validate yourself with buyers

By / / Communication, Negotiation, Sales Relationships, Sales Strategy, Self Promotion

Ever been asked straight up at the beginning of a prospective client meeting, “So what do you do?” despite your sincere intention to ask questions of your prospective buyer rather than talk about yourself?

I bet you have and I bet you found yourself on more than one occasion feeling somewhat uncomfortable because:

a) You didn’t know what to say quickly and succinctly thus making yourself feel and look a bit silly;

or

b) You ended up talking about your business, your products and yourself ad nauseam while watching your client or buyer’s eyes glaze over.

Hmm Awkward … why do …

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Make Sales Coaching THE priority & coach your way to success

By / / Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management

What sales leader wouldn’t like to see shortened sales cycles leading to more comprehensive deals with better margins? These are just some of the benefits of effective sales coaching. ‘Make coaching THE priority and coach your way to sales success’ was voted the second most important sales trend for 2012 from The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 by our readers. This comes at a critical time for business. Selling is now a highly skilled role requiring skilful people to execute sales strategy, win new clients, grow and retain existing …

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Move Over Marketing Here Comes Sales Strategy!

By / / Marketing, Sales Leadership, Sales Planning, Sales Strategy, Success

The pundits (including Barrett) are always reminding sales executives of the need to plan. However, a major miscalculation made by many organisations is viewing their sales operations as purely tactical functions. The result – at best, sales plans become little more than operational imperatives bumping along one quarter to the next with no strategic intent.

More and more, the high cost of selling, longer lead times and the multitude of choice that customers have – coupled with rampant (and often aggressive and diversifying) competition, diminishing product differentiation and …

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Turning Underperformers Into Sales Winners

By / / Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results, Sales Training

Underperforming sales people plague sales managers and organisations in every industry sector. Over the decades business leaders have adopted an assortment of tactics to combat and address this issue, with most showing little in return. Some large businesses have a policy to let go of the bottom 10-20% of sales performers each year and replenish with new sales blood. Other organisations are too slow to address the real issues affecting poor sales performance often tolerating incompetence. Neither strategy is useful, leaving people operating in a climate of fear or mediocrity. …

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It’s Not WHAT You Do But WHY & HOW You Do It

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Sales Culture

In December 2011 we published The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 and invited readers to vote on what they thought would be the most important trends in sales for this year. ‘It’s not WHAT you do but WHY & HOW you do it’ topped the rankings.

It seems that having a Purpose, the WHY, which is more than just making a profit, is becoming a key focus as businesses, leaders and employees alike seek to find more meaning in their work and each other and most importantly their …

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Athletes Chase Olympic Gold in UK and Business Success Back Home

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Skills, Success

It’s an Olympic year and many of our elite athletes are rightly focusing their efforts on the London 2012 Olympic Games. There are a certain number of gold medals on offer and everyone knows their worth in terms of the honour and glory and even more so in terms of ensuing publicity, product endorsements, speaking engagement and the like.

However, with limited gold medals available, pure focus on winning one will leave many athletes short-changed if they have nothing in reserve. Smart athletes leave nothing to chance. Just like good sales people and business owners they …

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No Sales Leadership + No Accountability = No Sales Results

By / / Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Success

Companies spend billions each year on sales training, organisational development, leadership training and other efforts to ultimately boost sales results. Often this is a waste of money because nothing changes for the better. Too busy looking for a short term boost, magic bullet or quick fix, i.e. the 1-3 day motivational sales training event, many business and sales leaders miss the vital point that sales training, more correctly termed sales fitness and evolution, is a long term investment. Smart business …

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