Why technique, discipline & hard work matter now & in the long run

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Coaching, covid-19, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Self Development, Strategy, Success

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When I was 12 years old, I was getting ready to compete in the final of the 12 & under 100 metres Butterfly event at the Victorian Country Swimming Titles in the 1970s. The event was being held in Mildura, Victoria on the Australia Day Long Weekend in January which is at the height of summer. The day temperature was around 35°C. My race was …

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how-do-I-keep-the-cabin-safe-and-people-calm

How do I keep the cabin safe and people calm?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Communication, covid-19, Opportunity, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Coaching, Sales Consulting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Psychology, Sales Skills

In HR you support “pilots and crews” to help them run smooth operations. When a crisis like this one hits out of the blue, and sales and service operations are disrupted, if not brought to a complete halt, it is critical to help everyone get back on their feet again and find solid ground quickly and safely.

Whether your business has been affected by the COVID-19 crisis directly or through the ripple effect across the value chain from suppliers to the customer experience, your sales and service leaders and teams are probably concerned, both personally and from …

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Selling Better, Faster using Real Time Sales Education

By / / Coaching, Collaboration, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Environment & Sustainability, Optimism, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training, sales-process-map, Selling Better, Solution Selling

I’m feeling elated.

I’m feeling vindicated.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the future of sales education and sales mastery.

Three weeks ago we started working with and coaching a telesales team of 9 people based in regional NSW.

Week one post the first session, sales had already started to improve and by week three, this sales team had their best sales week ever. The sales leader revealed this in the session we had this week and attributed it to the training we are doing.

Now that’s something to be optimistic about.

How did we do this?

Our focus was to help them sell better, faster using real …

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Why ‘Coaching with Compassion’ leads to healthier coaches

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Emotional Intelligence, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Resilience, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Wellbeing

At Barrett we are very mindful of our coaching approach and the well-being of the coaches and coachees. Read what Jens Hartmann, our head of Learning and Development has to say about this.

‘Coaching with Compassion’ not only is better for the coachee, it has health benefits for the coach as well

Let’s say you’re a sales leader, and you have the opportunity to coach a salesperson who has a decent track record. This has been their week:

Some big deals are taking more effort and time to close than expected; there’s pressure to close deals before the end of the …

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Sales Trend 4 – Trust improves the Learning and Development culture

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends, Trust

Sales Trend 4 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 explores how working within a culture of mistrust affects salespeople and their ability to develop trusted relationships with clients.

Building trust is key to sustainable long term sales relationships. This is surprisingly true even for very large B2B sales, despite the availability of hard facts on the buying company’s reliability, cash flow, payment morale, etc. Trust is still key to long term relationships that doesn’t require controlling and compliance functions all the time.

Creating and earning trust is therefore a skill salespeople have to master, and indeed, a lot …

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Sales trend 12 – Sales Coaching, at the core of sales success

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Coaching, Sales Coaching

The last sales trend of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about sales coaching.

In recent years, sales leadership coaching has continuously grown in acceptance by the managers involved in this task, as well as in its meaningful incorporation into the overall sales architecture of sales organisations. It has shifted from being an additional Learning & Development opportunity to becoming a central and critical part of the overall evolution modern sales operations are going through.

When sales management coaching first received broader recognition some two decades ago, it was regarded as a great opportunity to train salespeople in …

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Using ‘Intelligent Practice’ to enhance Sales Mastery & Results

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales performance, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

In a time poor world, many people including sales leaders and salespeople often bemoan the fact that they cannot seem to make time for important things like continued professional development, coaching, and thorough planning thus leaving their evolution and sales results to chance.

Rushing through the day, responding to ‘urgent’ matters and deadlines, getting in and out of sales meetings as quickly as possible, doing the bare minimum with CRM and reporting, with little or no time for reflection or developing mastery in their core capabilities seems to be the lot of many sales teams today.

When we rush through tasks, client …

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We all want better sales performance, but what works best?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Success

Most of us will agree that as sales leaders we want better and more consistent sales performance. The approaches on how to get there, however, vary greatly.

Some tactics offer a temporary lift in sales while other strategies deliver more sustainable changes and lifts in performance over the long term.

We’ve outlined three different approaches organisations take to improve sales performance and their impact.

Annual sales training session/conference – 1 or 2 day workshop

Effect
Result score out of 10

Popularity
9

Long term effectiveness
2

Team building
7

Risk
5

Return on investment
3

This is by far the most popular choice amongst sales managers and business leaders. However, the question that needs to be asked …

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The alarming findings about the Peter Principle & Sales Managers

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Coaching, Collaboration, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent

Have you ever worked with someone who was really effective in one role but then promoted to other roles, usually management, and ended having no idea and no real capacity to fulfil that role in a competent manner?

Chances are your answer is ‘yes’.

This is a common occurrence in many organisations where people are continually promoted until they are no longer effective in their roles – basically they rise to their level of incompetence. This is referred to as the Peter Principle which was highlighted by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in 1969.

Basically, the problem arises when the skills that makes someone …

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Salespeople beware tire kickers, IP thieves & time wasters

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Coaching, Communication, Education in Sales, Ethics & Values

Selling is a very time consuming set of activities at the best of times. Now with so much choice and complexity, sales cycles are taking even longer –like 20% longer– especially with multiple stakeholders in larger businesses.

So it only makes sense that we want to be sure as salespeople that a real deal is in the offering, that it is properly budgeted for, and we are in good position to win it.

Salespeople can often bend over backwards to please prospective clients, running around getting all sorts of things ready, and putting together comprehensive proposals to impress and persuade these prospective …

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