Why Sales doesn’t have its rightful place at the boardroom table?

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Pioneer, Sales Training, Self Development

The 8th August 2012 was a milestone for Professional Salespeople around Australia: until that day there had been no officially recognised benchmark for professional selling at tertiary level. Whereas Finance, Marketing, Production, Engineering, IT, Business Administration, Research & Design, Human Resources, Logistics, Procurement and even Entrepreneurship all have recognized tertiary qualifications, Professional Business Selling is the last role in the Value Chain to be officially recognised in this space. So here we are – It has taken over 100 years for Selling to make it on the Australian Tertiary Curriculum.

Here’s a speech given …

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5 questions every Sales Manager should answer

By / / Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results, Sales Tips

Most sales managers know the basics about their sales team and the selling process used in their organisation. They know which salespeople are their top, mid and bottom range performers; they know how long a deal takes to come to fruition, the length of the sales cycle, the dollar value of the average deal, and so on. However, successful sales leadership demands a deeper awareness of what’s going on within the

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B2B Field sales force to halve

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Pioneer, Sales Tips, Sales Training

What will sales teams look like over the next 5-10 years? How will we sell to and service our clients? Will our businesses actually require field sales representatives as all?

With ‘Field Sales Force Numbers To Halve’ voted the sixth most important sales trend for 2012 from The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 by our readers, these are critical questions business and sales leaders need to ask themselves if they want to have an effective sales effort.

WHY? With access to so much information available and a plethora of …

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Would You Listen to You?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Call Reluctance, Communication, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

Many sales people, especially those new to sales, often take it personally when a prospect says ‘NO’ and fail to persist with their prospecting efforts while others turn prospecting into stalking not knowing how to engage a prospect effectively. Either way, these people are failing to favourably and persistently position themselves with prospects thus limiting their sales opportunities even further. In sales there is a fine line between persistence and stalking a prospect. Did you know:

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Recognition or Praise?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Education in Sales, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Relationships, Sales Results, Sales Talent, Sales Tips

Sales managers are being told to do more with less, to work smarter to get peak performance from their sales teams, despite increasingly limited resources. As tough as it is, there is one tool in the sales manager’s portfolio that is never in short supply – Praise!

Yet for some reason, many sales managers find it challenging to show their appreciation for their sales people’s efforts, reluctantly doling out praise as if it was in short supply. …

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Industry Experience and Product Knowledge aren’t enough

By / / Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

As much as people want Sales to be considered a science the reality is that Sales has always combined a collection of facts with human judgments (or estimates). What this means is that there is no analytic approach that can single-handedly guarantee sales success. Result – Sales is likely to always be a mixture of art and science. So how do you sure up your success to gain that competitive edge? For the last few decades when transactional, product-pushing sales was all that mattered, most

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What’s influencing your customers’ buying decisions?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Neuroscience, Sales Psychology, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Strategy

Product demand and brand scores are down and the reasons are tough to manage. There are a multitude of factors influencing buyers, some are within our control and many are not. Factors such as bad experiences with retailers and intermediaries, mediocre service levels, the increasing number of competitors with similar products and brands, cheaper pricing are just some of the causes. The tricky global situation is also creating a more conservative spending climate where saving is now the prevailing consumer mindset. With all of this how do we influence our customers so that they want to buy from us? How …

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Top 10 Tips when Negotiating

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Education in Sales, Life Skills, Negotiation, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Sales Training, Self Development

Everybody needs to negotiate from time to time; at work, at home, as a leader, as sales person, and as a consumer. For some it seems easy, but others view the process of negotiation as a source of conflict to be resisted and avoided if possible. Negotiation is a process and a skill that can be developed. Negotiation can be described as a process that involves two or more people dealing with each other with the intention of forming an agreement and a commitment to a course of action where compromise needs to be reached in order to move forward. …

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How Commissioned-only Selling Ruined the Sales Profession

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results

The United States has been responsible for many great innovations but not all have turned out the way the inventors, architects or innovators intended. One such miscalculation was the introduction of ‘commissioned-only’ salespeople.

This initiative spawned negative effect on the reputation and results of salespeople worldwide and its stigma has remained ever since, commissioned or not.

Have you ever wondered how ‘commission only’ selling was born and why it harbours such negative sentiment? To understand the driving forces behind the commission only sales force, one must travel back to the US in …

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Stop Throwing our Salespeople and Sales Managers into the Deep End

By / / Education in Sales, Role Clarity, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Training, Success

Isn’t it about time we stop throwing our sales people and sales managers in the deep end and expecting them to swim – or sell and lead with no support or training in this case? Isn’t it about time that we had frank conversations with our potential recruits about what sales and sales manager roles really entail and make sure our recruits really do have the skills, mindset and knowledge to take on the …

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