Why you shouldn’t let rudeness lead to the ruination of business and sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Communication, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Presentation & Grooming, Sales Relationships, Self Development, Wellbeing

In the midst of the trend and hype of ‘customer centricity’, ‘the customer experience (CX)’, ‘customer excellence’ and other such terms it appears there is something amiss – the rise and rise of rudeness, incivility, disrespectful behaviour, and the trend of behaving badly at work.

This is not a new phenomenon; however, it is reaching epic proportions and affecting many businesses, their staff, customers and suppliers as we speak with devastating consequences.

Ray Williams writing for ‘Psychology Today’ back in October 2016 said this: “Has incivility become the new norm in America? Fundamental ethical values such as respect, fairness, honesty, personal responsibility …

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Four tips to spot business opportunities.

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations

How many people in your business are in contact with customers on a daily basis?

How many of them would be presented with new business opportunities but wouldn’t know what they look like or what to do with them?

Lately, we are hearing a common theme coming from CEOs, sales leaders, and partners at professional services firms: “My team cannot spot a business opportunity even when it’s right in front of them”

These leaders are not looking for everyone in their team to be able to sell or even pursue opportunities. All they want is for these people to be able to spot …

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Selling Better Case Study: How to do it properly

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Sales Strategy

A Barrett Selling Better Case Study

Here is a brief snap shot of the current results of a major Selling Better project we started with one of our clients in 2015: 60 salespeople plus managers in a mid-tier speciality banking and finance company, Australia.

  • 130% of sales budget year to date
  • Sales pipeline confirmed business out to 24 weeks versus previous 14 week benchmark
  • Sales team realignment to match higher value customer market opportunities
  • Sales team finding and winning larger, more profitable sales with better quality clients
  • Customer retention (of the right kind of customers) at 100%
  • The CVP (customer value proposition) has been adopted across the …

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Are customer surveys useless?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Customer Service, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy

There is no doubt that automation saves time and money. It improves efficiencies and very often eliminates human error. But what happens to companies when they try to automate all of their customer interactions in an attempt to cut costs and yet still give the appearance of caring? In other words, what bad business decision-making drives otherwise well meaning, customer-centric companies to send out post service customer service questionnaires and then fail to act on the feedback they get, or even to acknowledge them?

Over the past few weeks I had 8 such questionnaires, each asking me to rate the quality …

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How to create a positive buying experience

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Customer Service, Sales Driven Organisations

To attract new clients we need to create a positive buying experience for them.

This usually involves a combination of marketing activities and a salesperson in the first instance.

To retain clients we need to create another positive buying experience for them, and another and another, and another.

This usually involves more than just the salesperson, this can now involve a whole range of people from those who deliver, assess, implement, design, customise, coach, facilitate, create whatever has been purchased, to those who handle customer service enquiries, those in credit departments managing payments, those in chat rooms rendering tech support …

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Why everybody benefits from being more ‘Otherish’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills

What does being ‘Otherish’ mean?

Adam Grant, in his bestselling book Give and Take, talks about the concept of “otherish” being the opposite of selfish and different from selflessness. “Otherish” people consider both their own interests and the interests of others simultaneously; they are looking for win-win situations, as opposed to selfless people who may only consider the other and end up in lose-win setups or selfish people who look for winner-takes-all.

‘Otherish’ is all about a fair exchange of value.

Being ‘otherish’ is an important concept to understand and apply if we are to set up truly customer centric business models where …

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Sales Trend 10 – Oops! I’m in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Trends

Barrett’s Sales Trend 10 for 2015 is ‘Oops! I’m in sales’.

The general stereotypical view of selling and salespeople has remained relatively stable over the past 50 or so years, with the most commonly associated words and concepts being fairly specific (i.e. ‘used car salesman’) and/or negative (i.e. ‘pushy’, ‘sleazy’, ‘dishonest’)[1]. Even by people working in the sales profession, these schemas are often what they refer to when asked to describe sales. However, very slowly, this is starting to change.

Many companies and sales people are actively trying to change these stereotypes by promoting more positive behaviours …

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If you’re not selling, you’re supporting someone who is

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing

Last week I wrote about ‘making promises you can keep and keeping the promises you make’ and when the rhetoric and reality do not coincide thus leaving customers disappointed at best and downright cynical and mad at worst.

No business is perfect that’s for sure; however, if the intention of the business and its people is to genuinely help and serve customers for a fair exchange of value (whatever that is deemed to be) then everyone in the company needs to be trained -in what is relevant to each role: how to sell, serve and/or communicate- to a …

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2014 Sales Trend 2 – Telesales will have to make dramatic changes

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Sales Trends

The second Sales Trend for 2014  is ‘Telesales will have to make dramatic changes’. In-bound and out-bound telesales and call centre operations have traditionally focused on the uncomplicated sale of easy-to-understand commodities and the service support of relatively simple customer issues. Now, with the increasing demands of more sophisticated buyers they are going to have to make some dramatic changes. And with more people buying over the Internet, as opposed to telephone shopping, the number of people involved in those ineffective call centres is likely to drop. At the same …

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The problem with noisy call centres

By / / Brand & Reputation, Communication, Customer Service

If you look up ‘Noisy Call Centres’ on the web you will find a lot of information about the welfare of call centre staff. Often working in open plan office environments side by side, with many people speaking at once, ringing phones, office equipment hum and in some cases loud music in the background, you can understand why the welfare of staff is top of mind.

The ability to concentrate and do your job well in these environments can be severely hampered by all these distractions. Try selling and servicing in these conditions – it can be very challenging. Especially for …

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