Tendering and Trust

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Business Acumen, Communication, Sales Trends, Uncategorized

Sales trend 10 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 is about the importance of trust when writing tenders that win.

By guest authors David Lunn and Kelly Richmond, Bidwrite

Building BID BELIEVABILITY

Developing tenders and proposals is key to winning and retaining business through contested sourcing processes. Most buying organisations, government and commercial, use these types of processes in one form or another. So there really is no escaping the need to produce written communications to, at least in part, persuade a client or prospect to choose us.

Data emerging from the USA, …

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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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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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The Power of Assumptions

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Communication, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Sales Skills, Sales Tips
By guest writer Jens Hartmann, Head of L&D, Barrett

Driving away customers

Have you ever come across a salesperson making assumptions about you, your needs and expectations, or your experience? Then you are probably aware of how powerful these assumptions can be – at driving you away as a customer.

We experienced this recently. While undergoing renovations on our home, we ordered a new bathtub -stand alone, a very plain and symmetrical design – straight from a local manufacturer. However, when it got delivered after some 2 months or so, towards the end of the bathroom renovations as planned, it was not symmetrical …

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It all starts with Opportunity

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Opportunity, Optimism, Resilience, Success

Life is all about opportunity.

It’s about the choices we make on a daily basis.

We are all presented with opportunities every day whether we see them or not.

Some people are lucky enough to have opportunities served up to them on the platter of life not having to work very hard for them. And even then, these people may not realise their opportunities and let them sail away.

While others are given very little or nothing by way of opportunity, yet they are determined to make the most of their abilities and surrounding circumstance to create and realise opportunity where none may have …

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Ignore customer relationships at your peril: The demise of out-of-touch political parties

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Communication, Optimism, Selling Better, Strategy, Success

Even in the advent of big data, the nature of developing genuine customer relationships is generally not understood well enough by most businesses, and is not often on the agenda for thorough examination.

This got me thinking about political parties and the nature of their relationships with their party members and the broader communities upon which they rely upon to get elected.

In speaking with Leslie Roberts, Principal of ERM Advisory, he states that ‘In advice-based professional practices, such as accounting, financial planning, legal services, etc. it is all too common for the topic of customer relationships to be subject to gut-feeling, …

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Sales Trend 10 – Storytelling, taking sales teams beyond features and benefits

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Brand & Reputation, Communication, Marketing

Guest Author: Rishad Sukhia, CEO, Creative Agency Brightlabs, Melbourne, Australia

Sales trend 10 from our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about storytelling.

We all grew up hearing and sharing stories through childhood and adulthood – they help us learn, develop and, above all, they entertain and inspire us. Brands today are increasingly incorporating storytelling into their sales and marketing strategies in order to resonate with their customers.

This sales trend is focused on the increasing importance of the art and science of storytelling in sales and marketing, taking our sales teams beyond presenting features and benefits.

What is brand storytelling?

Whilst the terms …

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Why Purposeful Optimism is great for business

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Innovation, Life Skills, Opportunity, Optimism, Resilience

I want you to imagine that you are a 24 year old graduate going for job interviews. In this instance, you are being interviewed by a multinational who takes you to the next stage- completing a range of psychometric assessments followed by an interview with a psychologist. Imagine if you will, that this psychologist starts his interview with you by saying you are ‘too optimistic’, that you are a ‘Pollyanna’, that ‘you are unrealistic in seeing the world in such as positive light’, claiming there is something really wrong with you.

How would you feel? Well, this scenario happened to me …

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Trust is the heartbeat of business, sales and society

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Communication, Competition, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships

I have been writing about Trust in sales and business for many years; however, this year has seen a rise in my output on this topic, especially with the fallout from the Banking Royal Commission with posts such as:

The Flight to Ethical Selling – how the banks can avoid a royal commission

What does Selling Better mean for customers and shareholder return?

What are the biggest issues facing CEOs and sales leaders today?

Yet, trust is the heartbeat of business, sales and society.

Without this life force pumping vitality through our collective systems every day …

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Sales Trend 3: Human Centred Selling – designing Empathetic Customer Centric Cultures

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Collaboration, Communication, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Culture, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 3 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about Human Centred Selling.

Bestselling author and business icon Stephen Covey once said: “When you show deep empathy toward others … That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems”.

In this hyper connected world it’s easy to gain access to information and make simple online purchases that are transactional in nature; items that we know how to use ourselves. However, today there is so much information and so many choices available that many customers are finding making buying decisions overwhelming, especially when things move beyond the …

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