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Celebrating adult learners & the positive power of lifelong learning

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Education in Sales, Learning and Development, Life Skills, Sales Training

Learning doesn’t just happen in a school classroom with a teacher telling us what to learn – although that is how many people think of learning still. Learning happens everywhere anytime whether we are aware of it or not. Learning is an essential part of our evolution, our daily lives, and our daily survival strategies beyond the school gate. Interestingly, learning starts off as an intrinsic joy to children – Maria Montessori talks about the absorbent mind of children, inquisitive and curious about how the world around them and beyond operates. Oh, the joys of being a curious, courageous adventurous …

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Staying in touch for all the right reasons

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Results, Sales Tips

Prospecting is the function and ability to ignite opportunities with new and existing clients, new markets, within communities. Prospecting opens many doors if we are prepared to do it – consistently.

However, prospecting is probably the least favourite activity of people in business. Some people don’t know how to prospect which is a big deterrent to any task. But that can be easily fixed with training and coaching. Even so, others seem to find every excuse under the sun not to call someone.

It’s not the right time. What if they are busy? What if they say …

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The Characteristics of World Class Entrepreneurs & Change Agents

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Entrepreneurship, Sales Skills, Success

In my last article: Are Entrepreneurs & Change Agents Born or Made, we explored the importance of nurture, education, and environment to help cultivate our inner entrepreneur and/or change agent.

This time I’d like to present a list of characteristics or qualities that are often, if not always, present in those who become world class in this space.

While being born with high fluid intelligence, high openness to being creative and open to new ideas, and moderate agreeableness -i.e. being somewhat warm, friendly, and tactful with the ability to get along well with others- really helps, it shouldn’t stop …

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An Antidote to Corruption: Human-centred Business & Sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Ethics & Values, Human-centred, Selling Better

We know where there’s corruption you will always find poor or no governance, lack of transparency, nepotism, poor work conditions that exploit the vulnerable, high staff turnover, profit maximisation and cost stripping at the expense of sustainability, tax avoidance, and unethical leaders, underpinned by vested interests, at the helm of enterprises looking for self-enrichment at our expense promoting the ‘greed is good’ mantra.

For almost 20 years, Australia ranked in the top 10 least corrupt countries. However, by 2018, we’d fallen 8 points to 13. The fact that we are falling down the scale raises serious questions about the …

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kick start your sales growth

Seven Things to Kick Start Sales Growth in the New FY

By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, covid-19, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Learning and Development, Opportunity, Remote selling, Sales Growth, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Sales Tips, Sales Training, Strategy

No mucking around. Let’s get straight to the point.

Things have changed -dramatically- as a result of COVID with new opportunities and markets emerging, old ways of doing things in decline, leaders and teams needing to rethink how we do business, and customers trying out different ways of buying and engaging with suppliers. There’s no time to stand still it seems, but that is what we need to do sometimes to catch our breath, reset, and look at what we need to do next.

So here are 7 things you can do to get real sales traction and sustainable sales and business …

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The Difference between Generosity & Reciprocity & why this really matters

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Communication, Sales Relationships

What is the difference between Generosity and Reciprocity and why does this matter?

In simple terms and for the purposes of our work in sales and business, and maybe life in general:

Reciprocity

Is the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit. Think buying and selling and creating a fair exchange of value.

Generosity

Is the practice of giving something -time, money, food, kindness, advice, etc.- to people, usually, but not always, in need, without expecting something in return from the recipient of our generosity.

Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? But we can get ourselves into all sorts of relationship …

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Hybrid Selling – rebuilding how we sell and buy

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, covid-19, Remote selling

Sales Trend 6 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2021 explains how and why remote selling is here to stay.

COVID has completely reshaped how we do B2B sales with an almost exponential rise in the number of digital / remote client meetings being undertaken on video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Skype, or Google. Video conferencing and chat has replaced face-to-face encounters overnight. By now, most of us would have experienced video conferences through a number of those platforms, helping us stay in contact to buyers and sellers. What started out as a crisis …

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Unethical Self-Promoters – how a few bad apples spoil it for everyone

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Ethics & Values, Leadership, Self Promotion, Uncategorized

Welcome to part 2 on Unethical Self-Promoters which is inspired by a recent tweet by Pepper Bismol (@Gurl_getreal) who accurately described the real and dire consequences of a ‘few bad apples’:

‘The current usage of a ‘few bad apples’ bothers me. A few bad apples spoil the barrel. If you put a rotting apple in with three dozen good one, every adjacent apple will be rotting withing days.

‘A few bad apples’ does NOT mean ‘we have a good barrel but, oh well, sometime bad things happen’. ‘A few bad apples’ …

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unethical-promoters-checklist

Unethical self-promoters walk amongst us – be very aware

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Call Reluctance, Ethics & Values, Prospecting, Self Promotion

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series on Unethical Self-Promoters.

Back in 1988, I was introduced to a body of research* that focused specifically on the concept of self-promotion, prospecting, and new business development, and the learned behaviours and attitudes that give rise to the fear of self-promotion and sales call reluctance. This body of research was an illuminating, eye-opening, life changing experience for me in many ways – it was a key catalyst that helped kick-start the work I do today. Since then I’ve had the privilege of introducing tens of thousands of people to this research that includes …

Unethical self-promoters walk amongst us – be very aware Read Post »

Listening beyond self interest to achieve a fair exchange of value

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Business Acumen, Common Ground, Communication, Life Skills, Sales Tips

Back in 2012, I wrote the article – Are you really listening or just waiting to speak – which resonates with salespeople and leaders and gets them thinking about how well, or not, they really listen to others and how comfortable they are with silence and creating the space for others – in this case, their clients – to be heard and understood.

As we say in the Selling Better Manifesto, Selling is about creating a fair exchange of value between buyer and seller; it’s about mutual prosperity. For that to happen, we need to …

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