Know Thy Customer – Buyers in the Driver’s Seat

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Communication, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Relationships, Sales Tips

Robyn Creed our Head of Coaching hales originally from country NSW and recently spent a relaxing weekend mustering cattle on her sisters’ 11,000 acre property north of Jerilderie, in NSW. Here is her account of the cattle industry and how buyers are truly in the driver’s seat when it comes to customer buying preferences. “Over the course of the weekend we discussed many interesting facts in relation to producing quality cattle and I realised that like the Apples’ and Samsungs’ of this world cattle producers breed cattle based on the specific needs of what their …

Know Thy Customer – Buyers in the Driver’s Seat Read Post »

So What Does Being Strategic Really Mean?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Sales Consulting, Sales Strategy, Self Promotion

With sales under pressure to perform in a market where differentiation has almost disappeared and so many products and services are becoming ‘commoditised’,leaders and management are looking for an effective alternative. Everywhere you turn these days companies are (or want to be)’strategic‘. The challenge is, many business leaders and their management generally don’t say what they really mean by that, or how to do it.

So, what does being strategic really mean? Well for starters, being strategic is not …

So What Does Being Strategic Really Mean? Read Post »

Top 10 Tips when Negotiating

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Education in Sales, Life Skills, Negotiation, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Sales Training, Self Development

Everybody needs to negotiate from time to time; at work, at home, as a leader, as sales person, and as a consumer. For some it seems easy, but others view the process of negotiation as a source of conflict to be resisted and avoided if possible. Negotiation is a process and a skill that can be developed. Negotiation can be described as a process that involves two or more people dealing with each other with the intention of forming an agreement and a commitment to a course of action where compromise needs to be reached in order to move forward. …

Top 10 Tips when Negotiating Read Post »

Seeing with New Eyes

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Ethics & Values, Sustainability & Environment, Teamwork, Uncategorized

Joel Barker, a Futurist, has been a favourite thinker of mine for many years. His way of seeing the world with new eyes, his openness to possibility has inspired me to dream and explore the world. In times of unprecedented change we can be forgiven for feeling scared or worried. We can find ourselves looking backwards at the ‘good ‘ol days’ instead of forwards. We can feel closed to opportunity instead of seeing new possibilities as liberating.

Rather than dwell on the past and become nostalgic I propose we breathe deeply and take a look into the future to see what …

Seeing with New Eyes Read Post »

From Mass Marketing to Markets of One

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Communication, Marketing, Sales Skills, Social Sales, Teamwork

”Move over mass marketing welcome to fragmentation and segmentation” was voted by our readers as the third most important sales trend in Barrett’s 2012 Sales Trends Report. Market fragmentation and segmentation is well and truly taking over from Mass Marketing society’s staple way of communicating with buyers for over 50 years. So what will this change look like for our businesses and our customers? Barrett is seeing the relationship between marketing and selling widen as each fights for supremacy in the digital communications era. With this widening gap, marketing will finally …

From Mass Marketing to Markets of One Read Post »

How Commissioned-only Selling Ruined the Sales Profession

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results

The United States has been responsible for many great innovations but not all have turned out the way the inventors, architects or innovators intended. One such miscalculation was the introduction of ‘commissioned-only’ salespeople.

This initiative spawned negative effect on the reputation and results of salespeople worldwide and its stigma has remained ever since, commissioned or not.

Have you ever wondered how ‘commission only’ selling was born and why it harbours such negative sentiment? To understand the driving forces behind the commission only sales force, one must travel back to the US in …

How Commissioned-only Selling Ruined the Sales Profession Read Post »

Are you really listening or just waiting to speak?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Life Skills, Mindful selling, Wellbeing

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf… – Native American Proverb How long do we actually listen to another person before we start interrupting? How quickly do our own thoughts take over and we start thinking about what question to ask or what we need to say in reply even before they’ve finished speaking? Do we find ourselves interrupting the person to give our own opinion or finish their sentences before they are finished? If this sounds like you, then you’re not listening you are just waiting to speak and as the Native American Proverb above says, if we …

Are you really listening or just waiting to speak? Read Post »

The Difference Between Selling and Negotiating

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Mindful selling, Negotiation, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Success

Many people, especially sales people, often share the mistaken belief that Negotiation forms part of every sale which is not true. We often hear ‘my people need to be able to negotiate’ when upon further inspection they first need to learn how to sell. The reason many rely so much on negotiating is that their initial sales job was a poor effort. They neglected to properly establish the clients’ real priorities and needs and didn’t demonstrate how they can help the customer achieve results; financially as well as via their products, services, knowledge or intellectual …

The Difference Between Selling and Negotiating Read Post »

It’s Not WHAT You Do But WHY & HOW You Do It

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Sales Culture

In December 2011 we published The 12 Sales Trends of 2012 and invited readers to vote on what they thought would be the most important trends in sales for this year. ‘It’s not WHAT you do but WHY & HOW you do it’ topped the rankings.

It seems that having a Purpose, the WHY, which is more than just making a profit, is becoming a key focus as businesses, leaders and employees alike seek to find more meaning in their work and each other and most importantly their …

It’s Not WHAT You Do But WHY & HOW You Do It Read Post »

Athletes Chase Olympic Gold in UK and Business Success Back Home

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Skills, Success

It’s an Olympic year and many of our elite athletes are rightly focusing their efforts on the London 2012 Olympic Games. There are a certain number of gold medals on offer and everyone knows their worth in terms of the honour and glory and even more so in terms of ensuing publicity, product endorsements, speaking engagement and the like.

However, with limited gold medals available, pure focus on winning one will leave many athletes short-changed if they have nothing in reserve. Smart athletes leave nothing to chance. Just like good sales people and business owners they …

Athletes Chase Olympic Gold in UK and Business Success Back Home Read Post »

Scroll to Top