From Mass Marketing to Markets of One

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Communication, Marketing, Sales Skills, Social Sales, Teamwork

”Move over mass marketing welcome to fragmentation and segmentation” was voted by our readers as the third most important sales trend in Barrett’s 2012 Sales Trends Report. Market fragmentation and segmentation is well and truly taking over from Mass Marketing society’s staple way of communicating with buyers for over 50 years. So what will this change look like for our businesses and our customers? Barrett is seeing the relationship between marketing and selling widen as each fights for supremacy in the digital communications era. With this widening gap, marketing will finally …

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Why selling is now a team sport

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing, Procurement, Sales Relationships, Sales Training, Teamwork

Subjected to marketing and sales monologues for the better part of 40 years in the form of blanket advertising, product brochures and ‘your call is important to us’ busy signals, customers have taken the lead and are way ahead of us when it comes to having sales and marketing dialogues. Far more informed and sophisticated, and posting blogs, Facebook ‘Likes’, Tweets and reTweets, customers are engaging in their own sales and marketing dialogues about our products, our sales people, our promise, our customer service proposition and our brands, and they are affecting …

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What are the benefits of a CRM system in your business?

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM, Sales Consulting, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Planning, Sales Relationships, Sales Strategy, Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add

First of all what does CRM stand for? CRM = Customer Relationship Management.

The concept of CRM has been around for a long time. The original form of CRM was a manual card system kept by a sales person that usually sat on the sales person’s desk or alongside them in the car. These client cards sets were very valuable to the sales person as this is where they kept important customer information such customer contact details, key contacts in the company, a running commentary on their activities, personal and product preferences, buying patterns, business connections and so forth. Each card …

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Why everybody lives by selling something – part 2

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Education in Sales, Marketing, Procurement, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Social Media, Social Sales

For some time now I have been testing the concept of ‘everybody lives by selling something’ with almost everyone I meet, including senior leadership teams (comprising of HR, Finance, IT, Operations, and Sales), primary school teachers and administration staff, senior banking risk professionals, and health professionals (including my podiatrist and GP).

I am curious to see how people respond and how they see themselves in relation to the concept of ‘everybody lives by selling something’.

Often when one mentions the words ‘selling’ or ‘sales’ you can see people visibly recoil in disgust, with many immediately saying something like “I don’t sell” or …

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What’s in a relationship?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Ethics & Values, Sales Relationships, Self Development

 

 

The term ‘Relationship Selling’ is often bandied about by sales managers and sales people without properly defining what it really means.I often hear “We are in relationship selling” or “We need relationship sales people” however what I do not hear being asked is:

  • What type of relationship are we talking about?
  • What type of relationship are we looking for?
  • What do we mean by relationship selling anyway?

Relationship selling happens in any place where relationships are important. Thus when a husband and wife are negotiating about something, they will be more successful if they both consider the relationship as well as whatever it is …

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Be Consistent & Keep Your Customers Happy

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Competition, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Value Proposition & Value Add

One of the things that frustrate me the most as a customer is inconsistent service standards, inconsistent procedures and people’s inability to deal effectively and honourably with different types of people. If left unchecked this leads to confusion, frustration, wasted time, wasted effort, impaired brands and reputations, lost revenue and lost customers.

These issues don’t seem to be as much of an issue when you deal with very small companies because usually everyone knows what everyone else is doing and how it should be done even if it is only via word of mouth. However as businesses expand and …

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Contact vs Connection

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Networking, Sales Relationships, Value Proposition & Value Add

Know the feeling when you make contact with someone and you both promise that you will keep in touch but never do? Or someone you met briefly at a function, where you exchanged business cards, calls you up asking for one favour after another never seeming to return the favour? Or others still who seem to make friends with you only to use you to get to someone else and drop you and soon as they do? Well you are not alone. These are some of the pitfalls when it comes to networking and …

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Trust-based relationships

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Networking, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Up-selling & Cross Selling, Value Proposition & Value Add

I typed ‘Sales’ into youtube.com the other day just to see what was on offer. I have to say that some of the initial videos displayed on the front page were very disappointing indeed, especially when it came to building trust-based relationships with clients.

One well-known speaker was spruking ways to get your prospect to call you back. His idea was to leave a provocative half message that said something along the lines of “I’ve just been speaking to your competitors and they said you are in big ” then he suggested hanging up before you competed the message. …

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It’s all about the relationship – don’t they get it?

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy

I was out on my daily morning walk yesterday and found myself reflecting on the value of relationships – personal and professional. Due to the growth spurts of my 2 boys I often find my daily walk includes a stop at a well known bakery and our newly adopted local fruit shop. This is where my story about the power of substantial relationships has its anchor point.

For the past year I have been trying to find a new greengrocer. You see my old green grocer, Sam retired last year after 44 years in the same shop much to …

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