2019 Sales Trends Event  – Trust me, I’m in Sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Business Acumen, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Innovation, Opportunity, Optimism, Procurement, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Pioneer, Sales Research, Sales Trends, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Sustainability & Environment

On 27 March 2019 we hosted our 7th Sales Trends Business Breakfast celebrating the 10th edition of the Barrett Annual 12 Sales Trends Report with Trust as our central theme.

Over 120 people attended the event, mostly business people but we also had the Year 11 International Baccalaureate Student Representatives of the Melbourne Montessori School attend to further their knowledge and education as they study Business Management.

The attendees heard from our special guest speakers, Suzanne Paynter, Strategy and Policy Advisor for the Future Business Council, and Andrew Smith, Head of Business Customer at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and myself, where we …

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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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Is Consumerism past its use-by-date?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Optimism, Selling Better, Sustainability & Environment

This is a very interesting, perplexing and vexing question which is now being discussed at all levels of society.

This question is not only an economic and business question but, increasingly, a moral question challenging the very nature of how we make a living, how we make money and how we function as communities, economies and societies.

At this very point in our existence when anyone can reach almost everyone, everywhere, selling our wares and enticing people to buy, we, in the West at least, are confronted by the spectre of overconsumption, excessive waste with its environmental impacts and the ignominy of …

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Sales Trend 1: Selling in times of social mistrust

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Optimism

Sales trend 1 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2019 tackles the issue of selling when trust in businesses and institutions is low.

While there has never been a better time to be alive with access to wonderful resources and opportunities, amazing innovations, advances in technology and better healthcare, that can encourage the potential for our evolution and mutual prosperity, there is a shadow of mistrust that is following us everywhere.

We have more choices than ever before, and yet, we are more wary, cynical and cautious. We are flooded with oceans of information that are polluted with fake news …

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24 years in business and 24 Big Lessons to share

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Optimism, Selling Better, Success

This week marks the 24th anniversary since I founded Barrett and, over the summer break, I had some time to reflect upon myself, my business’ journey and the many, many lessons learned over the last 24 years.

We often get our ‘business lessons’ from big corporates about how to do this or that; however, I have found that many of these corporate lessons do not always translate well into small (few than 20 employees) to medium sized businesses which make up over 90% of all business in Australia.

So given that I fall into that 90+% category and have managed to …

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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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12 things we’ve learned so far about Selling Better in a 21st Century world

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Opportunity, Optimism, Sales Culture, Sales Results, Selling Better, Success

My team and I have been studying sales teams, salespeople, sales operating systems, sales strategies, sales processes, and sales cultures across a wide variety of industries in the public and private sectors, N4P and government since 1995 and we have seen and learned a lot of things.

Here is some of what we have learned:

  • Selling is everybody’s business and everybody lives by selling something
  • Selling starts with opportunity and purposeful optimism
  • Selling is the vehicle that allows opportunity to flourish and people to prosper; nothing happens until something gets sold
  • Selling at its best is when humans solve …

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    This didn’t happen in my time …

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Life Skills, Opportunity, Optimism, Selling Better, Success

    Today it happens it is the same
    to be decent or a traitor
    To be an ignorant, wise, a pickpocket,
    a generous person or a swindler
    All is the same, nothing is better
    They are the same, a fool
    and a professor
    There are no failing grades or hierarchy,
    the immoral people have caught up with us.
    If one lives in deceit
    and another, in their ambition, steals.
    It’s the same if it’s a priest,
    a mattress maker, a king of clubs,
    a rascal or a stowaway.

    Currently this seems to be the world we live in, and everywhere we turn, …

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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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    What are YOU doing to create space for opportunities?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Opportunity, Optimism

    In recent months, I have deliberately chosen to start each week by writing down this statement:

    ‘Be open to great opportunities’

    This statement appears at the top of my To Do list book that I take with me everywhere.

    It is handwritten and highlighted with yellow highlighter.

    I have chosen to do this for several reasons:

  • It keeps me focused on moving forward and being open to new ideas, new ways of doing things, new people and markets, new opportunities with new and existing clients, and so on
  • It stops me from falling into ‘group think’ and being drawn into unproductive spaces, and negative and ‘fake …

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