Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Self Promotion

On 19-20 April I had the privilege of chairing the 2-day conference: Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success in Sydney where we had over 100 women and 4 men attend.

The attendees were given the opportunity to hear from and interact with 16 of Australia’s leading female sales leaders and three male sales leaders and explore how they have created and charted their own visions of success.

Key topics discussed included:

  • Setting goals and planning for career growth
  • Defining your WHY?
  • Don’t let career breaks pause your progression
  • Finding the right Sponsors and Mentors and how to involve men on your career journey
  • Establishing your …

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Are customer surveys useless?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Customer Service, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy

There is no doubt that automation saves time and money. It improves efficiencies and very often eliminates human error. But what happens to companies when they try to automate all of their customer interactions in an attempt to cut costs and yet still give the appearance of caring? In other words, what bad business decision-making drives otherwise well meaning, customer-centric companies to send out post service customer service questionnaires and then fail to act on the feedback they get, or even to acknowledge them?

Over the past few weeks I had 8 such questionnaires, each asking me to rate the quality …

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Sales Trend 9 – Marketing technology for better sales results

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, CRM, Marketing, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Results, Sales Trends

Guest co-author: David Hubbard CEO, Founder and Revenue Growth Expert for Marketing Outfield, New York, USA

Sales Trend 9 from our  12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is about using Marketing technology for better sales results.

Sales and Marketing Technology – Which Trends Should You Pay Attention To?

No wonder we are confused. The number of vendors providing Advertising, Marketing OR Sales technology “solutions” has exploded in the last couple of years with it becoming a large multi-billion dollar industry with revenues growing at double digit percentages annually. There are now over 3000 vendors (and more in …

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Why commission selling in financial services should be banned

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

Here we are again, talking about unethical and corrupt sales practices in the Financial Services Industry.

The Youi fiasco, first reported by Fairfax on 28 August 2016 ‘Does Youi owe you?’, offers one of the worst examples of unethical sales behaviour and bad sales commissions plans I have ever heard of. If the reports by the inside whistle-blowers about the way customer leads are distributed and commissions are paid are to be believed (and I have no reason not to, given the overwhelming number of consumer complaints), then we have every right to be disgusted with the way the Youi …

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How to create a positive buying experience

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Customer Service, Sales Driven Organisations

To attract new clients we need to create a positive buying experience for them.

This usually involves a combination of marketing activities and a salesperson in the first instance.

To retain clients we need to create another positive buying experience for them, and another and another, and another.

This usually involves more than just the salesperson, this can now involve a whole range of people from those who deliver, assess, implement, design, customise, coach, facilitate, create whatever has been purchased, to those who handle customer service enquiries, those in credit departments managing payments, those in chat rooms rendering tech support …

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The 7 differences between Selling, Marketing & Networking

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Education in Sales, Marketing, Networking

As I have stated before I am a stickler for using correct definitions when describing concepts and their elements.

In music, science, mathematics, physics and engineering we do not usually debate the definition of these constructs. We accept that a crotchet is a crotchet, a prime number is a prime number and so on. No debate.

However, in the world of business and, especially in the world of Selling, we get all sorts of definitions floating about with meanings both dubious and factual. This causes, at best, confusion and, at worst, unnecessary angst.

In the world of selling I have met too many …

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Sales Trend 9 – Back to the Village

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Environment & Sustainability, Sales Trends, Sustainability & Environment

Barrett’s Sales Trend 9 for 2015 is ‘Back to the village’.

As globalisation became more and more prominent, Australian consumers in turn, became excited about being able to purchase items from all over the world. Suddenly they were exposed to a wider variety and range of products than ever before, and could boast about owning items from across the globe. As the novelty of “worldly” products began to wane, and the economic impact of the import/export markets were felt more locally, people started to shift back to purchasing Australian made products.

In recognition of this, the Australian government launched …

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If you’re not selling, you’re supporting someone who is

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing

Last week I wrote about ‘making promises you can keep and keeping the promises you make’ and when the rhetoric and reality do not coincide thus leaving customers disappointed at best and downright cynical and mad at worst.

No business is perfect that’s for sure; however, if the intention of the business and its people is to genuinely help and serve customers for a fair exchange of value (whatever that is deemed to be) then everyone in the company needs to be trained -in what is relevant to each role: how to sell, serve and/or communicate- to a …

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Make promises you can keep & keep the promises you make

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Marketing

You may have noticed in recent times that many companies, especially larger organisations, are focusing their marketing and advertising efforts on trying to portray themselves as caring and empathic to whatever cause they think is important to us; the ‘we understand you and what you are going through’ approach; trying to talk to us in a personal, friendly manner like they are our closest friends, and your call is ‘really’ important to us ‘trust me’ tones.

Well, I am not buying it at all. And neither are many other people. We’ve had enough.

Why? Because the rhetoric very rarely matches the reality …

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What are you really paying for? Hours or Experience

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation

Here is a statement a friend of mine posted in LinkedIn recently, “You’re not necessarily paying for my hours. You’re paying for my years of experience. Invest in quality because quick and cheap can be costly in the long run”.

It reminds me of the story of a businessman, his prestige car which, as a result of his clumsiness, had a dint in the side door, and a panel beater. The business man rushed into the panel beater’s early one morning saying he desperately needed his car fixed as he had an important appointment to attend and did not want to …

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