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 …

How Commissioned-only Selling Ruined the Sales Profession Read Post »

Are you really listening or just waiting to speak?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Mindful selling, Wellbeing

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf… – Native American Proverb How long do we actually listen to another person before we start interrupting? How quickly do our own thoughts take over and we start thinking about what question to ask or what we need to say in reply even before they’ve finished speaking? Do we find ourselves interrupting the person to give our own opinion or finish their sentences before they are finished? If this sounds like you, then you’re not listening you are just waiting to speak and as the Native American Proverb above says, if we …

Are you really listening or just waiting to speak? Read Post »

The Difference Between Selling and Negotiating

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Mindful selling, Negotiation, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Success

Many people, especially sales people, often share the mistaken belief that Negotiation forms part of every sale which is not true. We often hear ‘my people need to be able to negotiate’ when upon further inspection they first need to learn how to sell. The reason many rely so much on negotiating is that their initial sales job was a poor effort. They neglected to properly establish the clients’ real priorities and needs and didn’t demonstrate how they can help the customer achieve results; financially as well as via their products, services, knowledge or intellectual …

The Difference Between Selling and Negotiating Read Post »

It’s Not WHAT You Do But WHY & HOW You Do It

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Sales Culture

In December 2011 we published The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 and invited readers to vote on what they thought would be the most important trends in sales for this year. ‘It’s not WHAT you do but WHY & HOW you do it’ topped the rankings.

It seems that having a Purpose, the WHY, which is more than just making a profit, is becoming a key focus as businesses, leaders and employees alike seek to find more meaning in their work and each other and most importantly their …

It’s Not WHAT You Do But WHY & HOW You Do It Read Post »

Why B2B Buying Decisions Are Taking Longer Than Ever

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Mindful selling, Sales Coaching, Sales Forecasting, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Planning, Sales Relationships, Sales Training

Are companies taking longer to make buying decisions or does it come down to impatience on the part of the B2B sales person, in a hurry to reach their sales targets? It seems nowadays buying decisions are taking longer to make than in previous years. This slow purchasing process isn’t just happening at the enterprise level in large scale businesses, it’s extended right across the board.

Protracted buying is dramatically slowing the sales process. The flow-on effects of such time delays are causing blow-outs in the cost of sale for many

Why B2B Buying Decisions Are Taking Longer Than Ever Read Post »

Why leading an examined life is good for sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Coaching, Mindful selling, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Psychology, Sales Results, Wellbeing

‘Leading an examined life’ was voted as the Number 10 of Sales Trends for 2011. For many years you could lead an intuitive sales life because your product was your edge, but not anymore. With products replicated in minutes, the spotlight is well and truly on the specific ingredients of being an effective sales person and sales leader and managing oneself in volatile times. This all begins and ends with neuroscience. The latest scientific research into neuroscience confirms how we manage our brain. The brain is known to be like an electro-chemical …

Why leading an examined life is good for sales Read Post »

Do you have difficult clients or are they just different?

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills

Style adaptability is where a person can read another person’s preferred communication style and adjusts their own communication style to that of the other person, thus making shared communication and understanding easier. It is imperative to the principle of exchange and critical to any sales role, yet it is often one of the most poorly executed skills.

Time after time we come across teams of sales people who have no conscious idea about how to adapt their style to that of another. Instead when they come across differences, communication usually breaks down and they will speak about the …

Do you have difficult clients or are they just different? Read Post »

Whada ya rates?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Negotiation, Sales Skills, Uncategorized

Whada ya rates? ‘Cos I’m a wholesaler and I can do better rates than them. I can look at your thingos and give you a better deal”

This is an excerpt from a call I received from a telecommunications wholesaler the other day. As you can see this is not someone asking about my business rates but what I am paying for a particular service. I am the supposed client in this exchange. To make matters worse, when the caller introduced himself he said his name was John – that’s it, no where he was calling from or why he was …

Whada ya rates? Read Post »

4 valuable life skills that make for success in sales and any other role

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Business Acumen, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Prospecting, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Self Development

There are many things written and said about effective sales people, effective leaders, successful entrepreneurs, great teams and so on.

Many descriptions are in circulation. There is an overabundance of experts recommending this approach one day and that approach the next.

Those of us who want to be effective and successful often follow the advice of those experts however we are at risk of turning ourselves inside out and losing sight of what we are really here to do if we keep trying to bend to the winds and whims of the latest management trends, fads, findings, …

4 valuable life skills that make for success in sales and any other role Read Post »

Think you can get away with it. Think again

By / / Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Sales Relationships, Value Proposition & Value Add, Vision, Mission & Purpose

In the world of sales there has always been the following advice for customers and for good reason:

  • Buyer beware
  • Read the fine print
  • If it’s too good to be true then it is

And so on.

As much as I advocate for and encourage healthy, trust based, open transparent customer relationships I am fully aware of the ‘dark side’ in the profession of sales.

In my travels, sadly I hear of many stories about people being ripped off and taken advantage of often with no idea about what is happening to them until it’s too late. All under the guise of selling.

There will always be …

Think you can get away with it. Think again Read Post »

Scroll to Top