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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The key differences between B2C & B2B Sales Market Segmentation

By / / Collaboration, Education in Sales, Marketing, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Strategy, Success

A word of caution, this topic can be very tricky as there are various schools of thought around what is a segment and how to segment, with Marketing Segmentation being the most well known in business circles. However, for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on an area that is less well known but equally important – Sales Market Segmentation with a particular emphasis on B2B sales.

At Barrett, we do a lot of work with B2B sales and marketing teams in helping them define their sales market segments so they are very clear …

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The Holy Trinity of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Buying, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Solution Selling

This post has been inspired by my colleague, Ben Shute, who I work arm in arm with bridging the divide between sales and procurement. He wrote about the Holy Trinity of Procurement Skills and so challenged me to do the same for Sales.

Here is my contribution.

The profession of selling requires a whole range of capabilities. It’s hard to know where to begin to define the 3 core elements for sales – the Holy Trinity of Selling.

So I’ll start with the master categories of Knowledge, Skills and Mindset from Barrett’s Sales Competency Dictionary.

Knowledge

Let’s …

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Why Procurement can and should be the epicentre of innovation for business

By / / Business Acumen, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Procurement

Procurement, whether they are aware of it or not, are the epicentre of innovation and leadership of complex systems management within organisations and across the supply chain, or at least they should be.

Their exposure to all elements of the supply chain can and should inform them and in turn other key stakeholders within and outside their organisations of the latest, the easiest, most sustainable, faster, ethical, better ways of doing business.

While they cannot expect to be experts in every area of business, they can and should be experts in systems, managing complexity and managing relationships which is what a supply …

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Sales – the new team sport

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Role Clarity, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Trends

Sales trend 9 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 explores the characteristics and benefits of truly integrated sales teams.

The future of the individual ‘solo’ salesperson is coming to an end for most businesses.

What is taking their place is an integrated team of people working on sales together.

Sales leaders do not need teams of individual B2B salespeople, they need people with a diverse range of skills working as integrated teams across a range of sales disciplines and capabilities.

Teams who can cover areas such as sales and territory planning, account development, CRM & sales pipeline …

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Why Progress, NOT Perfection, helps us find Common Ground for the Common Good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Voltaire

“The world is becoming very black and white with people striving for perfection where only the best is acceptable. If we continue down this road, then we will lose everything that is human.” Madeline Stuart*

“Perfection is the enemy of progress.” Winston Churchill

Our relationship with perfection and progress can be rather fraught.

In the human world that often promotes perfection or the idealised state, i.e.

The perfect body

The perfect marriage/relationship

The perfect career

The perfect mind

The perfect way to be sustainable, and so on…

We can …

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How prepared is ‘The Lucky Country’ for tough times?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Collaboration, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Opportunity, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Uncategorized

Ah the good times…

Ah 28 years of uninterrupted growth…

Ah Australia, ‘The Lucky Country’*…

Ah ‘How good is Australia?’…

Pssst. But don’t talk about the R** word…

We are indeed fortunate in Australia to have access to many resources, space, and talented people; however, our luck maybe running out if we carry on drinking the ‘recession avoidance’ Kool Aid, carry on with our old ways of managing business and thinking everything is rosy instead of adapting to the array of changes, challenges, and opportunities that are out there in the market place.

Which is why I couldn’t go past economist Jim Stanford’s comments in Paddy …

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Engaging with words and stories to find common ground

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Opportunity, Sustainability & Environment, Trust, Wellbeing

Using words & stories to find common ground & progress towards a better future together

As mentioned previously, finding common ground is indispensable to our progress, especially if we are to move forward as communities and solve the most pressing issues we have to deal with as humans inhabiting an abundant but vulnerable and finite planet.

In this article we explore how words, language and the stories we tell can help us find common ground or tear us apart, and look at some examples to demonstrate how things can go either way.

Have you ever shared a story or anecdote that sounded perfectly …

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Why should I give a damn about you?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Wellbeing

The Common Ground Series – Part 2

As mentioned previously, Finding Common Ground is about exploring shared interests, beliefs, or opinions between two people or groups of people who may disagree about most other subjects.

In a world where the media, governments and self interest groups are portraying, more often than not, a polarised ‘us’ versus ‘them’ narrative, even though many of us go about our day-to-day interacting with all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds, it’s even more important that we resist this divisiveness and work together to find common ground for the common good.

Why?

Octavio Paz, …

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In order to progress we must first find common ground

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Sustainability & Environment, Wellbeing

The Common Ground Series – Part 1

Common ground: shared interests, beliefs, or opinions between two people or groups of people who disagree about most other subjects. (Cambridge dictionary)

Finding common ground is indispensable to our progress, especially if we are to move forward as communities and solve the most pressing issues we have to deal with as humans inhabiting an abundant but vulnerable and finite planet. This matter affects us all, in all aspects of our lives and as such it is a topic worth exploring and understanding in more depth. This article is the first in a series about progress …

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