How Selling can be an act of Kindness

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Life Skills, Mindful selling, Sales Relationships

Since I started Barrett in January 1995, I have met thousands and thousands of salespeople and sales leaders and whilst I can tell you many stories about these encounters the one thing I can say is that the motivation driving the vast majority of these sales and service people, and sales leaders is the desire to help people, their clients, be successful and do the right thing by them.

Very few people that I have met want to harm or take undue advantage of others, even when pressed to meet targets …

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Sales Trend 6 – Low Carbon Economy Sales Opportunities

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

The sixth Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘Low Carbon Economy Sales Opportunities’.

Despite many governments lagging behind in terms of creating and endorsing low carbon policies and industries, forward thinking organisations are taking the lead on creating low / no carbon businesses and partnering with each other. And it’s not just big business, there is a growing number of SMEs (small to medium enterprises) driving change too.

Rather than only focusing on the cost of creating a low carbon economy, this sales trend is seeing smart companies and communities looking and acting on at the abundance of opportunity within new and …

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Do you have a Poverty or Prosperity Consciousness?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Success, Wellbeing

Organisations of every size all have a collective personality that drives their thinking, behaviours and actions and can affect their performance for good or bad. These collective personalities may or may not align with an organisation’s publicly stated values and principles; they can change over time, and are usually defined, influenced and/or condoned by the senior leadership team.

Much of an organisation’s success, or lack of it, is influenced by its corporate attitude. It attracts, hires, and reinforces the behaviours, values and attitudes that the leaders exhibit.

Whilst these collective personalities are often …

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Gauging our clients’ appetite for change

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Tips

Do you find that some clients are open to change, they embrace change while others see change as disruptive and possibly threatening? And then you find there are those clients who don’t see they need to change at all, they seem ambivalent or oblivious to the need to change.

Whoever is in charge of the buying decisions in an organisation (or family, or partnership) can severely affect, for good or bad, the perception of change across the whole culture. For instance, you may introduce to your clients a new way of doing something that offers increased efficiencies, improved effectiveness, and lowers …

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What we cannot control in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Competition, Resilience, Sales Research, Sales Strategy

Last week we talked about what we can control and influence in sales, especially in uncertain times.  This week is looking at what we cannot control in sales and how to learn to live with it.

What (and who) we cannot control

Let’s face it, we operate in a complex world where many things are outside our direct control and influence, yet these very things can influence and affect ourselves, our clients, markets, and communities. There are some very interesting frameworks that can help us separate out a range of factors that affect our market places, communities, and countries.

  • [1]PEST analysis (‘Political, Economic, …

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How can we control our sales destiny in uncertain times?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Self Development, Wellbeing

Salespeople deal with market ups and downs, political influence, people’s (customers, influencers, internal stakeholders, bosses, etc.) changing mindset and goals, etc. on a daily basis. Sales can be like herding cats on the best of days.

These factors and others can cause even the best of salespeople to be concerned because they are mostly outside the salesperson’s direct control yet we still have to meet our sales targets. So it’s not easy being a salesperson, especially in tougher markets. However, highly effective salespeople will tell you that while tough markets can be a real challenge, …

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How to avoid the 7 deadly sins of selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Success

The first objective of effective sales training and coaching is to help us, salespeople, become aware of any bad habits we may have developed over time. The next objective is to admit that these bad sales habits are deterrents to our success. By breaking these bad habits down and see them for what they are we can begin to rebuild our sales skills by putting in place healthy sales habits that lead to success.

However, even if you do not have the opportunity to attend good sales training or have access to …

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Coming full circle & the ripple effect of doing good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration

Have you ever wondered what the ripple effect of your actions has on other people, things and systems way down the line or beyond your immediate world?

Often in sales we are very focused on the person in front of us; the immediate client, the immediate transaction or result. In business we often focus on the bottom line, the markets, the ROI (return on investment).  All important of course for success in business and sales; however, I would like to focus our attention on what happens when we do good things whether they be for profit …

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How to keep your sales wheels turning

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Research, Sales Training, Self Development

Maintaining momentum in a sales career requires a proactive, disciplined approach. There are many things to consider and put together to achieve an effective selling week and sales year. The onus is on us, the salesperson, to make the most of what we have. However, many sales people unfortunately adopt the approach that it is their company’s responsibility to train and educate them, to provide everything they need before they can truly be effective as sales people.

By contrast, enlightened, highly effective sales people recognise that they need to invest in themselves, invest in their own learning and continuous development, make …

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2014 Sales Trend 2 – Telesales will have to make dramatic changes

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Sales Trends

The second Sales Trend for 2014  is ‘Telesales will have to make dramatic changes’. In-bound and out-bound telesales and call centre operations have traditionally focused on the uncomplicated sale of easy-to-understand commodities and the service support of relatively simple customer issues. Now, with the increasing demands of more sophisticated buyers they are going to have to make some dramatic changes. And with more people buying over the Internet, as opposed to telephone shopping, the number of people involved in those ineffective call centres is likely to drop. At the same …

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