How buying patterns have changed

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Procurement, Sales Results, Social Sales, Value Based Selling

Salespeople everywhere are faced with demands to meet increasingly high quotas in the face of growing market complexity and relentless financial pressure. There is also more competitors with Me2 products –just as good as brand names–, and an increased pressure on margins with buyers reluctant to make early commitments. Salespeople are facing demands like they never had before.

Current research from the Behaviour & Economic Research team at NAB¹  states that forward orders (in 2014) were very patchy for both big businesses and SMEs, making it very hard to forecast sales and manage pipelines. This only confirms the reticence of buyers …

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Sales Trend #3 – Are you ready for the Share Economy?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Sales Trends, Sustainability & Environment

Our Sales Trend #3 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2015 report is about the Share Economy. Here’s a snapshot of this trend.

One of the worst consequences of over-consumerism has been the exponential growth in the amount of goods that end up in landfills. This is the result of a combination of many factors such as consumers buying things that they don’t need for long—or even at all—and the manufacturing of cheap goods that break easily and are un-repairable, amongst others. On the other hand, consumerism has also meant that the …

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Warren Buffett’s wisdom and effective sales team

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations

How can we build effective sales teams for the short and long term?

This is the perennial question that has been asked by sales managers and business leaders for years.

The simple answer is bit by bit, over time by investing wisely in the right things.

Warren Buffett knows a thing or two about investing and his insights and wise counsel hold very true for building highly effective sales teams. Here are some of his famous quotes and how we see them in relation to building sales teams:

  • There are no bonus points for complicated investments. The truly big investment idea can usually be …

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    Some Social Selling Myths & Challenges

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Prospecting, Social Media, Social Sales

    Since LinkedIn started its publishing arm there has been a growing tsunami of articles filling our news feeds and inboxes. Amongst this flood of information are some great articles and, of course, there are those articles that are a waste of time. That’s to be expected. Within this tsunami there has been a range of articles promoting the astounding benefits of Social Selling, especially around writing and sharing content with prospects and clients as a critical part of the sales process. Articles that are sure to get you noticed and have clients contacting you so that you can make more …

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    Trend 2 – Retail: From app to brick-and-mortar

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Trends

    For a long time now we have been hearing how online retailers (or e-tailers) are killing the brick-and- mortar retail industry. Low performing retailers complain that the competition is unfair, since e-tailers have fewer expenses (they don’t need a central location for their store—if any at all, they need barely any staff, etc.). Another focus of the retailers’ complaints against online stores is that people use the brick-and-mortar shops to try-on, feel, and choose products and then buy online.

    So what happens when e-tailers decide to move into the brick-and-mortar space?

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    What if we sell better instead of only selling more?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Environment & Sustainability, Sales Results, Success, Sustainability & Environment

    What if we aimed to sell better instead of focusing on only selling more?

    At risk of giving every sales manager and business leader a coronary with this question, especially if we are running behind on our sales targets, I would like us to consider the following proposition.

    ‘Strive not to be the best company in the world, but the best company FOR the world’

    What if we took this approach to business?

    This is the philosophy of BCorps which is encouraging the proliferation of a new type of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. They …

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    What to do about badly informed buyers

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Procurement

    ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing’ is an 18th century saying that means a small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they are more expert than they really are.

    How true in today’s society.

    For example, the medical profession has warned people about their penchant for searching the Internet for symptoms of the ailments they feel that they have. Worse still is looking for the remedy without getting professional advice in some mistaken belief that if it appears as a result of a Google search, it must be true.

    It’s not that the information is essentially wrong – though …

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    Getting your sales perspective in 2015

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Sales Psychology, Sales Skills, Value Based Selling

    Perspective Taking is a critical life skill that can serve us well no matter what role we are in.

    Perspective Taking is also a vital sales skill if we want to develop viable relationships with clients, influence people to consider and buy our offerings, grow sales and lead successful sales careers.

    What is Perspective Taking?
    Perspective Taking is the act of viewing a situation, or understanding a concept, from an alternate point-of-view. Perspective Taking is the process of temporarily suspending one’s own point-of-view in order to view a situation as someone else might. This process does not necessitate any form of affinity, …

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    Sales Trend 12 – The Enlightened Sales Person

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Communication, Sales Relationships, Sales Trends, Uncategorized

    As the year comes to a close so do we present the 12th and final Sales Trend for 2014. This sales trend is seeing a new kind of salesperson emerging in our midst. Not common by any stretch of the imagination, but appearing in businesses slowly but surely. Smart companies are becoming aware that they need a new kind of salesperson, especially at the higher levels of business. The days of the flashy, aggressive, all talking ‘pitch master’ , or ‘you’re my mate’ schmoozer are fading fast from most industries with only …

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    Does ‘Gratitude’ belong in B2B sales?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Sales Relationships

    I have been thinking about how salespeople and others who are responsible for bringing in new business to their organisations feel when they get heartfelt thanks and feedback from their clients for a job well done.

    The sort of feedback that actually tells the salesperson that they really made a difference to that client’s situation, life or business; that the client was grateful to have worked with them because they are better off with them than without them; that the client really appreciated the efforts that the salesperson made to make the most of the situation.

    I know how I feel when …

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