Is your sales problem really a sales leadership problem?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Talent

Of course every business wants their sales people to prospect more, close more sales, produce more consistent sales results, achieve their sales targets/budgets, have happy, loyal clients, and so on.

Some of the most common questions we hear from sales managers, sales leaders and CEOs are:

‘How do we get our sales people to sell more, produce better sales results?’

‘How do we find better sales people who can sell?’

If you look at the overwhelming content on the internet about sales problems and issues it focuses mostly on sales people and their performance…. “how to sell more” is the most common search term.

However, …

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Rethinking our economy… How do we sell in a Circular Economy with Doughnut Economics?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Strategy, Sustainability & Environment, Wellbeing

Go out on a limb

It’s hard not to notice that we all have quite a bit on our agendas; lots of things competing for our time and attention; too many things that are likely to leave us feeling overwhelmed, overloaded and often confused.

People are asking lots of questions, e.g.:  Which way to turn? Which way to look? What to do? What is right? What is wrong? Who should we believe? Where do we go?

But, as we always say ‘It all starts with OPPORTUNITY’. So I invite you to go out on a limb with this article. I need you to …

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Why I want to tell you what to do, but I won’t, even if I know better

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

We’ve all been there

How many times do we want to tell our clients what to do?

After only a few sentences uttered by them we, of course, know immediately what their issue is. We’ve seen it 10s or 100s of times before. It seems so obvious to us what they should do.

“If only they would just do this… it would be so much better/ save them so much time/ get them there faster/ make them safer, etc.” I hear you cry.

Welcome to the world of domain expertise when you (potentially) know a lot more about something than someone else does. It …

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It’s all about Opportunity: A future – disrupted & reimagined

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Innovation, Life Skills, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Pioneer, Success

On December 4 (Melbourne) and 6 (Sydney) 2017, Barrett will be attending The Future: Disrupted and Reimagined event featuring Malcolm Gladwell, author of five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, and Steven Levitt, economist and co-author of Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think Like A Freak and When To Rob a Bank.

Gladwell and Levitt are some of the world’s most interesting and outstanding writers talking about the 21st century world and how we can rethink and reimagine our future in times of great …

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Why Sales is still the elephant in the room

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Strategy

Have you noticed that nearly everyone you meet from CEOs and leaders to professionals services firms, not-for-profits and universities, to the people in the street want to do anything but actually sell and talk about sales?

Many of them will tell you that they want to grow their businesses, deliver better revenue and profits, drive better customer experiences, be taken more seriously by their clients, build better relationships, attract more customers, etc.

To achieve these things they will tell you they are trying out some special apps, social media strategies, CRM systems, developing their leadership styles, EQ assessments, agile work environments, flexible …

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2017 Sales Trend 6 – Where are All the High Performance Sales Coaches?

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 6 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about sales coaching.

This sales trend focuses on how sales coaching is still lagging behind business coaching as a standard business discipline, but how the best sales leaders are using coaching to transform their sales teams and sales performances to maximise success. So what’s going on with sales coaching?

A lot has been written about coaching, specifically business coaching, over the years and the proof is that coaching, like anything if applied effectively, does work. For instance, the International Coach Federation (ICF) conducted a worldwide survey …

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How Retail Discount Advertising negatively impacts B2B Sales – Part II

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Solution Selling

How to shift the conversation from Price to Value

In last week’s post we talked about how –given that every business executive is a consumer, and the amount of discount sales in the retail sector- the expectation of ‘better price’ is impacting B2B sales.

We concluded that a more pragmatic approach is needed, based on value rather than absolute price.

This is the point we need to understand as sales people and business leaders: the client does not really see a price, they see and are looking for value.  So our real mission as sales people is to find out what …

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How Retail Discount Advertising negatively impacts B2B Sales – Part I of II

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Tips, Value Based Selling

Fact – every business executive is a consumer.

Fact – every consumer, certainly here in Australia, is exposed to a barrage of discounting and sales offers from the retail sector.

In fact, on any given day, whether on TV, radio, billboard or online, we are bound to be exposed –in our experience- to at least 5-10 “discounting sales” or “discounted special offers” that are being promoted by companies selling everything from food to solar power, new homes to motors cars, from beer and wine to computers.

You have to wonder whether these retailers (and their advertising agencies) realise the damage they are doing …

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Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Self Promotion

On 19-20 April I had the privilege of chairing the 2-day conference: Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success in Sydney where we had over 100 women and 4 men attend.

The attendees were given the opportunity to hear from and interact with 16 of Australia’s leading female sales leaders and three male sales leaders and explore how they have created and charted their own visions of success.

Key topics discussed included:

  • Setting goals and planning for career growth
  • Defining your WHY?
  • Don’t let career breaks pause your progression
  • Finding the right Sponsors and Mentors and how to involve men on your career journey
  • Establishing your …

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2017 Sales Trend 4 – Learn to Embrace and Manage Complexity

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 4 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report explains why to have extraordinary sales teams and operations, we have to embrace complexity.

As John Lord[1] said “Perhaps a greater understanding of what I am saying might be obtained by exercising a greater willingness to think more deeply”. 

Regrettably, most organisations ONLY view their sales operations as tactical linear functions of the value chain—and while sales teams need to get up close and personal on a tactical level with customers, if sales is only viewed through the overly simplistic lens of “foot soldiers selling products” then …

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