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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2016 Sales Trend 8, Streamlining CRM

By / / CRM, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 8 from our  12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is ‘Streamlining CRM’.

By guest author Aminah Georgiou.

Many companies have invested in feature rich sales technologies only to find the functionalities are not being fully utilised or used at all by their sales teams. In many instances, these technologies are either overly complicated requiring excessive administration by sales teams or missing the mark completely on the actual requirements of salespeople and customer facing employees to perform their tasks adequately.

The smart CRM systems are moving with the times making their user interfaces more intuitive, easy to use, and …

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Why using Sales Intelligence helps you close more sales

By / / CRM, Sales Results, Sales Tips

Whilst many salespeople complain of their frustrations with getting an initial appointment with new prospects, it’s the next step – converting these initial buyer-seller conversations into a presentation opportunity – that should be more of a concern. Research from CSO Insights shows an alarming erosion in the ability to move a sale from an initial conversation with around only 48% of these being converted. This is down from a high of around 58%.

The study on sales intelligence by CSO says the reason companies are struggling to move prospects past initial conversations is that today’s ultra-informed buyers want …

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20 years of improving sales teams & operations. What’s changed?

By / / Collaboration, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The 9th January 2015 marks 20 years in business for Barrett Consulting Group.

Twenty years of helping companies, sales leaders and their salespeople improve their sales operations and their sales capabilities.

Twenty years of helping salespeople and buyers have better, more mutually rewarding experiences, setting a fairer exchange of value.

As I moved toward this 20th anniversary, I started to muse upon what the sales world was like 20 years ago, compared to what it is like now. Here are just some of my initial musings and observations.

A lot has changed in the sales world over the last 20 years, some changes for …

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Going mobile – the rise of Smartphones in Sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Meetings, Social Media, Social Sales

In December 2012, we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each trend. This month we are focusing on the Sales Trend “Going mobile – the rise of smartphones in sales”. As Australia deals with the challenge of becoming more globally competitive, organisations are making greater use of both increased mobility as well as tele-conferencing using smartphone technology.   Anecdotal research is showing that smartphones are giving salespeople an edge in a number of ways. This sales …

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Customer Experience Management (CX) will replace CRMs

By / / CRM, Social Media

More products and services are becoming commoditised. Price differentiation is less of a sustainable advantage. Smarter buyers demand a faster response and expect greater value. In this kind of market it’s no longer good enough to simply satisfy customers. Successful organisations are those that delight their customers. That means that companies are going to migrate from merely managing relationships to understanding their customers’ entire experience with the organisation. In December 2012, we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each trend. This month we are …

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Why managing sales inputs leads to sales disaster

By / / CRM, Education in Sales, Performance Management, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Pipeline, Sales Results

‘Selling is a numbers game’ has been said more times than any of us care to remember.  And yes, numbers are critical to sales, however some organisations place far too much emphasis on the managing the numbers, especially their obsession with their salespeople’s input activities – i.e. number for prospecting (cold) calls, client meetings, numbers in the pipeline etc. This “management by numbers” approach is flawed and leads to confusion, distress and worst, poor sales results over both the short and longer term.  The approach fails to grasp that up to 80% of the activities of a sale are outside …

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Intuitive CRM

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM

‘Intuitive Customer Centric CRM’ was voted by our readers as the number 10 Sales Trend of the 12 Sales Trends of 2012.  The goal of a CRM solution should be to drive growth (i.e. revenue) and maximize efficiencies (i.e. profit) in business practices and processes developing relationship management (sales) with customers at the centre of every decision.

However, for too long CRMs and sales automation have essentially been technological concepts foisted on salespeople by IT specialists who convinced management (not sales) that CRMs and SAs would …

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Are you letting online leads go cold?

By / / CRM, Social Media

Middle of last year I wrote about sales training and social media and in particular the impact on car dealerships and their sales teams. In particular, their tardiness in responding to online leads. Well it seems this is still a problem – only the other week one of my coaching clients told me about his dealings with a prestigious car brand where he contacted a dealership to arrange a test drive only to have someone get back to him 7 weeks later, well and truly after …

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