Sales Trend 10 – Oops! I’m in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Trends

Barrett’s Sales Trend 10 for 2015 is ‘Oops! I’m in sales’.

The general stereotypical view of selling and salespeople has remained relatively stable over the past 50 or so years, with the most commonly associated words and concepts being fairly specific (i.e. ‘used car salesman’) and/or negative (i.e. ‘pushy’, ‘sleazy’, ‘dishonest’)[1]. Even by people working in the sales profession, these schemas are often what they refer to when asked to describe sales. However, very slowly, this is starting to change.

Many companies and sales people are actively trying to change these stereotypes by promoting more positive behaviours …

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Sales Trend 9 – Back to the Village

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Environment & Sustainability, Sales Trends, Sustainability & Environment

Barrett’s Sales Trend 9 for 2015 is ‘Back to the village’.

As globalisation became more and more prominent, Australian consumers in turn, became excited about being able to purchase items from all over the world. Suddenly they were exposed to a wider variety and range of products than ever before, and could boast about owning items from across the globe. As the novelty of “worldly” products began to wane, and the economic impact of the import/export markets were felt more locally, people started to shift back to purchasing Australian made products.

In recognition of this, the Australian government launched …

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Sales Trend 8 – Unearthing the Real Neuroscience in Sales – We cannot read minds yet

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Neuroscience, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 8 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2015 is about “neuroselling”.

Recently, there has been a shift from economic models to emotion-based or psychological models of selling. The shift to emotional, psychological, and scientific models has been occurring across other areas of business for many years, so it comes as no surprise that it is now happening in sales. However, rather than talking about emotion-based models, people are jumping straight to scientific terminology and talking about using neuroscience in sales.

Cognitive neuroscience (a branch of neuroscience, which is the study of the nervous system as a whole) …

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Lessons for Sales from ‘Good to Great’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Talent, Self Development, Success

Jim Collins (author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t”) stimulates a thought that many sales managers should be asking themselves right now: “What makes good salespeople great?”

At Barrett we work with sales managers and salespeople every day, and recently asked that question of a number of people in both categories. The response wasn’t that startling. What Barrett learned is that few sales managers, and even fewer salespeople, could actually define what “great” selling actually means. This has confirmed Barrett’s findings that many salespeople let themselves down because they …

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Cracking the Sales Myth of Hunters & Farmers

By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent

Many so called “experts” claim that there are two types of salespeople – Hunters and Farmers.

Salespeople, so these experts claim, are either one or the other. Consequently they fit one sales position or another. In our experience, having spent decades working with salespeople at every level in a wide variety of segments, salespeople don’t fit into these neat stereotypes.

The myth about Hunters and Farmers in Selling has been overtaken by a business reality.

Before we crack the myth let’s take a look at where the concept came from in the first place.

The person credited with starting the concept …

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Survival of the Adaptive P3: Use Effective Sales Metrics

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Performance Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Strategy

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

Part 3 is all about using effective metrics to track sales

In an ideal world, the financial returns and the ability of the sales force to generate business at respectable margins would be precisely calculated, and deciding the effectiveness of any sales strategy would be simple. In reality however, there are multiple, and usually imperfect ways to measure most …

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Survival of the Adaptive P2: Develop a well-informed sales force

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Leadership, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

Part 2 is all about developing a well-informed sales force

A decade ago, when traditional product-pushing sales were all that mattered, most sales leaders employed and trained well motivated salespeople – usually with what they referred to as “industry experience”. Today that is hardly enough!

Many of these sales leaders now confess to being less certain that industry experience or having …

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How should sales teams adapt to changes in the marketplace?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Strategy

It is a harsh reality – product demand and brand scores are down. Some contributing factors to this decline are: bad experiences with retailers or suppliers, poor responses from intermediaries, mediocre service levels, automated procurement practices, stripped down pricing, and an increased number of competitors with products that are just as good and brand names that are just as well respected.

In the face of this growing complexity and a challenging global economic environment, salespeople face continuing demands to meet higher sales quotas. And this in markets most likely suffering from already squeezed margins, and buyers who are sceptical and reluctant …

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If you’re not selling, you’re supporting someone who is

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Marketing

Last week I wrote about ‘making promises you can keep and keeping the promises you make’ and when the rhetoric and reality do not coincide thus leaving customers disappointed at best and downright cynical and mad at worst.

No business is perfect that’s for sure; however, if the intention of the business and its people is to genuinely help and serve customers for a fair exchange of value (whatever that is deemed to be) then everyone in the company needs to be trained -in what is relevant to each role: how to sell, serve and/or communicate- to a …

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Make promises you can keep & keep the promises you make

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Marketing

You may have noticed in recent times that many companies, especially larger organisations, are focusing their marketing and advertising efforts on trying to portray themselves as caring and empathic to whatever cause they think is important to us; the ‘we understand you and what you are going through’ approach; trying to talk to us in a personal, friendly manner like they are our closest friends, and your call is ‘really’ important to us ‘trust me’ tones.

Well, I am not buying it at all. And neither are many other people. We’ve had enough.

Why? Because the rhetoric very rarely matches the reality …

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