2010 Sales Trend #3 – Getting back to basics

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Skills, Strategy

‘Getting back to basics’ is our 2010 Sales Trend #3 as voted by you, our readers. Despite the positive start to 2010 in Australia, especially compared to other post GST economies, we cannot forget the fundamentals when it comes to creating a healthy, viable sales team, culture and business.

One of the real challenges of 2010 will be keeping sales momentum while understanding how changes in customers, competitors, markets, innovations, media, technology and all manner of things will impact on our businesses and our people. Getting our heads around all this to find the right ingredients …

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Is a climate of perpetual discounting limiting choice and eroding our quality of life?

By / / Negotiation, Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

Gerry Harvey, (Harvey Norman) was recently bemoaning the culture of discounting in our retail sector. He was saying that retailers had lost the plot and didn’t know how to sell real value anymore. He said they had fallen foul of a culture of constant discounting as the only way to attract customers, which was tantamount to business disaster and a degradation of the retail sector. I happen to agree with Gerry in this instance.

He went further by saying that retailers were failing to find out what customers really wanted and what they really valued. He said retailers weren’t offering choice …

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Why is ‘cheap’ a false economy?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Negotiation, Procurement, Sales Culture, Strategy

Understandably everyone wants to save money, especially in these times, however we need to be aware of falling victim to false economy. False Economy is an expression that refers to an action which saves money at the beginning but which, over a longer period of time, results in more money being wasted than being saved.

For instance, I have never understood why some people will drive half an hour across town to get their petrol two cents a litre cheaper, all the while using up what they may save by driving across town, notwithstanding the time it took to travel there …

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I’m not a sales person but I have to sell. What do I do?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Self Development, Self Promotion

After thousands of hours of study and many years honing technical skills to be a competent professional in your chosen field, it can come as a rude shock that you now need to sell your services and capabilities as well. In today’s busy market, a competent selling capability isn’t a nice-to-have it is an essential business and life skill.

Interestingly, the topic of selling and growing a business often doesn’t feature in those university lectures does it? In fact, selling is in many cases covered over and, if spoken about at all, was only mentioned as an unsavoury aspect employed by …

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Why ‘everybody lives by selling something’ is key to your success

By / / Sales Culture, Success

‘Everybody lives by selling something‘ was the trend, in our 12 Sales Trends for 2010, voted as second most important for businesses in 2010. It is a very significant trend on many levels as it involves everyone, not just the people who are labelled as ‘sales’.

‘Everybody lives by selling something’ has had a profound impact on our business at Barrett. Since we introduced this as our core philosophy and principle behind our work it has been amazing how many people feel …

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How do I distinguish between a genuine buyer and a saboteur?

By / / Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Negotiation

Everything lines up: your solution is a very good match for the client company, you have ticked all the boxes but the deal is rejected. You are perplexed and confused. “It’s a great solution! It’s what they wanted and needed. Why are they saying no?” Building on from last week’s ‘How do I deal with client objections?‘ l thought we should look at when objections become personal.

Over the years I have come to realise that many of us have lost sales not because we didn’t have a good offering or we …

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How do I deal with client objections?

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Negotiation, Sales Skills

Many sales people will tell you one of the biggest worries in sales, besides prospecting, is dealing with customer objections. Its true many people do not like dealing with objections or conflict, however, it is also true that many people unintentionally create objections and conflict by not understanding a customer’s real needs or priorities and failing to find common ground.

In my opinion ‘overcoming objections’ is often blown out of proportion in terms of the issue it claims to be. Too much time and attention is spent on objections in sales meetings and sales …

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Lead the way

By / / Communication, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership

In December 2009 we published The 12 Sales Trends of 2010 and invited readers to vote on what they thought are the most important trends in sales. Thank you to everyone who shared their views and voted. Each month we will explore one of the trends in more detail, starting with the trend voted as most important, Lead the Way. As voted by you, here are the sales trends for 2010 in order of importance:

1. Lead the Way
2. Everybody lives by selling something
3. Back to Basics
4. Social Sales
5. …

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Why do we ask questions?

By / / Communication, Sales Skills

Building on my article ‘Where is my inner six year old when I need them?‘ using effective questioning techniques is one of the most significant key differentiators between a person with good sales skills and a person with outstanding sales skills. However, many sales people find this the most challenging aspect of the sales process.

Questions are used to not only assist you with gathering information about the customer i.e. their needs, situation, issues and priorities but also, when used effectively, assist the customer with coming to a …

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What makes customers unhappy?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service

What’s happened to having a pleasant, hassle free customer experience in this country? We are hearing more and more war stories from customers. Some go to buy something and are met with whinging, whiny staff or others return to a supplier (retailer or B2B) with a query, return, or problem to be resolved to be met by resistance, apathy, excuses, and, worst of all, customers being informed of their lack of understanding about how the company in question works.

I mean, do we really expect our customers to be fully aware of and understand the following:

  • The reasons why we haven’t …

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