Latest findings from the world of Sales Transformation

By / / Performance Management, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Training

I recently had the opportunity to MC and attend the “Optimising the Sales Force Conference – OSF2010 (website delete)” which was the follow up to the inaugural OSF2009. Building on last year’s success, this year’s conference was attended by over 120 high level sales leaders across Australia. Once again I was privileged to be part of the panel of international and local experts presenting on this year’s topic, Sales Transformation.

This was the second time in Australia that we have had the opportunity to come together as a profession and share ideas and discuss important matters moving forward, and from …

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More lessons from MasterChef – Can you take the heat?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Performance Management, Sales Skills, Self Development, Success

As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”. Once again MasterChef has served up some great life lessons. Last year I wrote about the great leadership, coaching and mentoring we can learn from MasterChef. Again Garry, George, Matt and the other guest chefs showed us how to excel in this area of leadership.

On this occasion, I want to comment on ‘Resilience’ and dealing with setbacks and challenges, and how MasterChef gave us a window into how people handle stress and demanding situations. The time pressures and …

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Collaboration – The New Competition

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Performance Management, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Success, Teamwork

The New Competition was voted by you as the number 7 Sales Trend for 2010. Over the coming years, we will see collaboration become the new competition. Markets around the world are crying out for collaboration as innovation and differentiation become scarce in a sea of commoditised products and services.

Sales people who see themselves as collaborators, both internally (colleagues, departments) and externally (customers, competitors), will prosper more than ever during 2010 and beyond.

A large 5 year long research study conducted by B. Rosenbaum, Business Horizons, entitled Seven Emerging Sales Competencies and published in Jan/Feb 2001 revealed what makes highly successful …

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Is internal competition eating away at your sales results?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Performance Management, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Talent, Self Development, Strategy, Success, Teamwork, Value Proposition & Value Add

Many sales cultures are traditionally based on respect for authority, status and success, and encouraging competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented atmospheres. Although this is not true for all businesses, especially in the 21st Century! There are a growing number of businesses adopting more collegiate, lead team approaches. However, despite different types of cultures, sales performance and results are usually derived from the efforts of individuals. Harnessing those individual efforts to achieve synergy (the sum is greater than its individual parts) is a key task of management, yet so many get it wrong. Let’s take a look …

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Are you making the most of Psychometric Assessments?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Performance Management, Value Proposition & Value Add

Many of us actively recoil when we see the words ‘Psychometric Assessments’. This may be due to fear of the unknown, seeing them as ‘tests’ or just tedious questionnaires. While you would not be alone in this, we on the other hand are advocates (of the right Assessments). At Barrett, we spend much of our time demystifying what Assessments actually are and how businesses can benefit from using them. So even if you have been brave enough to use Assessments, most people do not know how to get the most out of them. Often the Assessment process is seen as …

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What’s the right incentive scheme for my sales team?

By / / Performance Management, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Talent

Of all questions, this is the one that remains on the minds of sales leaders and executive teams. It is often the cause of more debate and angst than any other question in a business.

People search for the golden answer, however their quest will not deliver a definitive one because it all depends on what you want to achieve.

The current wisdom is that while there are ‘best practice’ frameworks for creating the ideal sales compensation or incentive scheme, it is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

While Remuneration Surveys can provide some pointers, they are not a reliable or accurate …

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Creating an effective sales performance management system

By / / Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Talent, Success

Following on from last week’s article about managing and measuring the right things in sales, I thought it would be worth looking at some of the key principles for effective sales performance management systems.

The first place to start is to align your sales performance management system and subsequent key measures to your organisation’s strategy and goals. It’s then the job of the CEO and the Sales Leader to ensure the organisation (that means everyone else who supports the sales effort) is aligned to the sales performance management system. When this dimension is in place …

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Measuring and managing the right things in sales

By / / Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Self Development

Who wants to work with accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people? Of course we all want these types of sales people in every sales team. Yet, most businesses do not support this by setting up their sales team to clearly measure and manage their sales performance.

Sales performance management begins with accurate role descriptions and perception, data collection, and measurement in line with set goals and strategy, however many organisations measure only one variable, sale results (outputs measures).

This type of approach leaves businesses and sales teams in the dark about how they arrived at their sales …

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Why developing your Sales Managers is the key to your sales success

By / / Business Acumen, Coaching, Competition, Education in Sales, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

It may surprise you to discover that many Sales Managers learn how to be a Manager on their own.

According to the latest international study on Sales Training and Sales Force Effectiveness, many Sales Managers are given very little or no support when it comes to being a competent, effective Sales Manager. In fact, many Sales Managers reported that they were given no formal training in Sales Management practices, either before or during their tenure as a Sales Manager.

The study reported that Sales Management training is the category of sales training …

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How we can learn MasterSales lessons

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Talent

Like many people in Australia, my family and employees have been captivated by MasterChef Australia.

What I love about MasterChef is that it can be seen as a metaphor for expressing our talents and being the best we can be. Given my interest in everything to do with sales, personal mastery and performance, I particularly love the parallel I have been able to draw about what it takes to be an elite master chef and an elite sales person and elite sales leader by the observation I have made in MasterChef.

As lessons for people wanting to master the sales profession,MasterChef works …

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