Should clients pay for tender and RFP submissions?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Procurement, Uncategorized

In principle, and ideally in practice, yes they should.

Why?

Because there is a lot of time, effort, money and IP that goes into preparing a tender or RFP (request for proposal). This also includes RFIs (request for information).

The companies requesting these tenders, RFPs and RFIs are freely benefiting from the expertise of suppliers if they are requesting highly detailed responses and expecting to pay nothing for this information. With the advent of software these companies can easily compare offerings and strip mine the IP to serve themselves at the suppliers’ expense. Basically they are getting knowledge and expertise for free and …

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The Optimistic Sales Professional

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Mindful selling, Opportunity, Optimism, Resilience, Sales Essentials, Self Development, Success

Sales is a demanding profession. Top performers know that to sustain a high level of performance, they need to keep fit and well – both physically and psychologically. And there’s a body of research showing that keeping an optimistic outlook and having the physical energy to meet the demands of working in sales are critical to a salesperson’s effectiveness, success and overall well-being. Something many of us know intuitively, but good to have it validated.

Managing and overcoming setbacks is key to succeeding in anything. In sales we are tested every day. Without a sense of optimism it would make getting …

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Sales Strategy: Ditch short-termism for robust sales strategies that drive more & better sales now & over the long-term

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Strategy, Success

‘If you don’t know where you’re going, every road will lead you nowhere’.

This famous quote is attributed to Henry Kissinger.

Why have I led with this quote? Sadly, in today’s busy, noisy and complex world, this quote represents a common state of affairs for many organisations’ CEOs, Executive Leaderships Teams, Sales Leaders and their sales teams who are struggling to make sales, retain their relevance with clients, and generate profit.

Instead, many are finding themselves in a race to the bottom price war which is not a strategy for success, instead it’s a reaction to short-termism which only leads to one’s …

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The Power of Optimism and Opportunity for Sales & Business

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Opportunity, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership

Bob Safian, Editor in Chief of Fast Company, said: “…Uncertainty reigns as rapid change disrupts expectations and social norms. Global leadership is fractured and economic conditions fluctuate widely. Specters loom, from climate change to cyberterrorism. The relentless pace can make you want to curl up in a corner, wary of what might come next. Or you can stare unblinkingly at this time of chaos and dig into the difficult work of building a better tomorrow.”

What do you see?

What will you choose?

It all starts with opportunity and optimism[1].

Opportunity is a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible …

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Sales Trend 3: Human Centred Selling – designing Empathetic Customer Centric Cultures

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Collaboration, Communication, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Culture, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 3 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about Human Centred Selling.

Bestselling author and business icon Stephen Covey once said: “When you show deep empathy toward others … That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems”.

In this hyper connected world it’s easy to gain access to information and make simple online purchases that are transactional in nature; items that we know how to use ourselves. However, today there is so much information and so many choices available that many customers are finding making buying decisions overwhelming, especially when things move beyond the …

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Are your sales conferences pumping or slumping?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Sales Conference, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Teamwork

*** Trigger Warning: May contain traces of sarcasm ***

We’ve all been there: a sea of people, pulled together from across the country or region, locked in a windowless room with artificial light, seated at round tables with mints and water, patiently waiting for the parade of presenters to finish their ‘Death by PowerPoint’ presentations so we can get to the coffee station during the day and then the bar at night to start really engaging with our colleagues. During the day some relief can be found in the smartphones that everyone will be less and less discreetly looking at repeatedly, …

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Salespeople beware tire kickers, IP thieves & time wasters

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Coaching, Communication, Education in Sales, Ethics & Values

Selling is a very time consuming set of activities at the best of times. Now with so much choice and complexity, sales cycles are taking even longer –like 20% longer– especially with multiple stakeholders in larger businesses.

So it only makes sense that we want to be sure as salespeople that a real deal is in the offering, that it is properly budgeted for, and we are in good position to win it.

Salespeople can often bend over backwards to please prospective clients, running around getting all sorts of things ready, and putting together comprehensive proposals to impress and persuade these prospective …

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Cringeworthy: how arrogance and ‘seniority’ destroy sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Sales Meetings, Sales Talent

Here is a senior manager’s account of a real life, cringeworthy example of when a so called ‘experienced’ senior consultant completely stuffs up a prospective client meeting despite the young graduate, a millennial from the vendor’s company, sitting in the meeting with them instinctively knowing better and trying to do the right thing by the client and the company:

“One of the graduates from our team went out with a senior consultant on a prospective client meeting. Throughout the meeting the senior consultant was ignoring the prospective client and just trying to push one of our products. The graduate, …

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Sales Trend 2 – The case for long-term focus

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Strategy, Success, Sustainability & Environment, Vision, Mission & Purpose

Sales Trend 2 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2018 Report is the case for long-term focus and strategy.

It’s no news that most businesses are focused on the short-term, living from quarter to quarter, and that although there’s ongoing argument about whether there’s enough evidence or not to say that long-term businesses perform better, most of the arguments against it (pro short-term) focus only on profits.

However, this sales trend reports that there are increasingly louder calls for businesses to be more long-term focused in their planning and strategies. The power of long term planning can be found in …

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Forget NPS, it’s about NES (net easy score)

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs

Making ‘my life’ easy in this complex world is customer experience gold.

However, everybody obsesses about their NPS – net promoter score.

If you haven’t heard about NPS before, it’s a metric for assessing customer loyalty for a company’s brand, products or services. Many companies use NPS as part of their customer relationship management (CRM) strategy because the metric is easy to calculate.

Getting promoted more often for the right reasons is only underpinned by how well we address our customers’ needs and priorities and how easy we make the experience for them.

Too many companies have not addressed the customer’s buying journey and …

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