Celebrating 25 years of Helping People & Businesses Sell Better

By / / Education in Sales, Entrepreneurship, Sales Coaching, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Training, Selling Better

The 9th January, 2020 marks 25 years in business for Barrett.

25 years of helping people and businesses sell better.

25 years of exploration, research, experimentation, creation, building, encouragement and promotion of, and learning and education in ethical human centred sales systems, strategies, processes and practices.

25 years of a self-funded research project focused on creating The Selling Better Movement with the hope it will help people understand that there’s a better way of doing business.

A way in which we can all be prosperous.

I started the business out of my home office with $3,000 in capital on 9 January, 1995 with an idea …

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Selling Better, Faster – Total Sales Team Turnaround

By / / Case study, Optimism, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, sales-process-map, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Systems Thinking

I’m feeling elated and vindicated yet again.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the future of sales systems and sales stewardship.

Two weeks ago I sat down with a very large key B2B client of ours to do a two year retrospective on their Selling Better Project. Considering where we started with this Executive General Manager  discussing his major issues, concerns, ideas and opportunities around their lack of sales strategy, sales operational framework and sales processes, the lack of stewardship and coordinated discipline within the national sales team, the turnaround and results have been thrilling on many levels:

  • Sales are up 8% and steadily …

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How to sell better in uncertain times

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

Here we go again.

Global disarray, government elections, political scandals of betrayal and corruption. How do we keep our head when everyone else around us is losing theirs? How are we supposed to lead business and keep selling better when there’s a general feeling of uncertainty that makes decision making so difficult?

There are those of us who have been around in business for some time now. Many of us have been through a few major crises before such as the GFC and the major recession we had in the early 1990s. Things weren’t pretty, for sure, and yes there was a …

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2019 Sales Trends Event  – Trust me, I’m in Sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Business Acumen, Collaboration, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Innovation, Opportunity, Optimism, Procurement, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Pioneer, Sales Research, Sales Trends, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Sustainability & Environment

On 27 March 2019 we hosted our 7th Sales Trends Business Breakfast celebrating the 10th edition of the Barrett Annual 12 Sales Trends Report with Trust as our central theme.

Over 120 people attended the event, mostly business people but we also had the Year 11 International Baccalaureate Student Representatives of the Melbourne Montessori School attend to further their knowledge and education as they study Business Management.

The attendees heard from our special guest speakers, Suzanne Paynter, Strategy and Policy Advisor for the Future Business Council, and Andrew Smith, Head of Business Customer at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and myself, where we …

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Check the ‘Sales Fitness’ of your Sales System

By / / Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Systems Thinking

For those people who have been reading my work for some time know that in order to achieve peak sales fitness, now and in the long term, I advocate that business and sales leaders and their sales teams need to adopt a Systems approach to sales operational excellence in order to sell better, deliver competitive sales strategies that work, find new uncontested markets and at the same time minimising execution risk on the ground.

My persistence in promoting and advocating for a Systems approach to sales excellence is deliberate on every level because if we want to stay in business and …

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What are the biggest sales issues & opportunities for CEOs & Sales Leaders today?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Strategy

Since late 2014, we have been rolling out the Sales Strategy & Operations Audit working with a wide range of businesses across industries in the public, private, and N4P sectors to help them sell better.

In 2017, we compiled the Barrett Sales Strategy & Operations Benchmark Report for 2015-2017 based on over 20 companies and found several trends emerging that are relevant across businesses and industries. We are also seeing this across many other businesses with or without the audit.

Here is what we found:

The biggest sales issues facing CEOs & Sales Leaders today:

  • Average or below average: Every business …

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    Get more sales by aligning your sales process to the buying process

    By / / Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results

    In the classic Bill Murray movie Caddyshack, he tries in vain to catch a gopher (rodent) ruining the golf course. Eventually, it occurs to him that “in order to catch a gopher, you have to think like one…” It was a good movie, with good advice from Murray. And it is good advice for salespeople who want to “catch” customers: they need to think like their customers.

    What this means is that salespeople have to go about learning and understanding how customers buy. Salespeople know, at all times, where their prospects are in their sales cycle. The problem is that they …

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    How to find more sales growth

    By / / Sales Consulting, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips

    Many companies in B2B sales are looking for more growth in their respective market segments; however, their sales and business leaders are still looking at their markets as whole segments rather than seeing and seizing the lucrative opportunities that micro segmentation can bring.

    Without effective micro-segmentation, businesses risk missing niche or unique opportunities and/or needlessly increasing the cost of sales across the segment as a whole. To micro-segment a market effectively, you need to consider (at both the macro and micro levels) the size of each sales segment and the purchasing drivers of relevant customers. From …

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    Why ‘Point Solutions’ ruin sales operations

    By / / Education in Sales, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Results

    What is a Point Solution? A point solution solves one particular problem without regard to related issues. Point solutions are usually called for when there is a need to fix a specific problem or fast-track the implementation of a new service. Unfortunately, point solutions often don’t deliver meaningful or sustainable results. The sales training/consulting industry is littered with point solution providers, all promising ‘sales excellence in a box’ ranging from the latest selling style [1] you must adopt to a New York best seller book promising the golden nugget that will turn your sales around. When it comes to …

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    Industry Experience and Product Knowledge aren’t enough

    By / / Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

    As much as people want Sales to be considered a science the reality is that Sales has always combined a collection of facts with human judgments (or estimates). What this means is that there is no analytic approach that can single-handedly guarantee sales success. Result – Sales is likely to always be a mixture of art and science. So how do you sure up your success to gain that competitive edge? For the last few decades when transactional, product-pushing sales was all that mattered, most

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