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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    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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    20 years of improving sales teams & operations. What’s changed?

    By / / Collaboration, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Vision, Mission & Purpose

    The 9th January 2015 marks 20 years in business for Barrett Consulting Group.

    Twenty years of helping companies, sales leaders and their salespeople improve their sales operations and their sales capabilities.

    Twenty years of helping salespeople and buyers have better, more mutually rewarding experiences, setting a fairer exchange of value.

    As I moved toward this 20th anniversary, I started to muse upon what the sales world was like 20 years ago, compared to what it is like now. Here are just some of my initial musings and observations.

    A lot has changed in the sales world over the last 20 years, some changes for …

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    Top 13 Sales Issues for businesses in 2014

    By / / Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Results

    As we get close to our celebration of 20 years in business we thought we would share with you the most common and critical sales problems that are affecting sales teams large and small, across all sorts of markets and industries in 2014. Here they are:

  • Businesses not making sales quota overall
  • Not enough salespeople making quota
  • Win/lose ratio unacceptably low
  • Deals taking too long to close
  • Leads/sales ratio too low
  • Not getting enough client meetings
  • Margins being squeezed
  • Chasing poorly qualified leads
  • Not engaging with decision makers
  • Salespeople not able to engage effectively at C level
  • Salespeople not understanding the client’s perspective
  • Too much discounting
  • Losing deals on price

    • The list contents may …

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    My one wish for all sales teams is …

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Training, Self Development, Solution Selling

    My one wish for sales teams is that they are given the opportunity to continue to learn and develop in a dynamic learning environment where learning, reflection and constant iterations in their behaviour and skills are a regular, daily way of life. Those businesses create, what we call at Barrett, a Perpetual Learning Environment (PLE) where learning is integrated into everything we do and is a daily way of life not just a training event held once a year.

    Sounds idyllic, fanciful even, well there is a body of work emerging that shows there are significant …

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    The legitimisation of Sales Strategy

    By / / Marketing, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

    The 10th Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘The Legitimisation of Sales Strategy’

    Having a sales strategy is now of vital importance to the survival, growth and profitability of any organisation. Yet Sales Strategy, as a business discipline, has been poorly understood by sales managers and executive leadership teams alike, and rarely, if ever, executed well by many businesses… however, times are indeed changing.

    Sales Strategy is how the business organises its sales efforts across the value chain to go to market, who it is going to sell to and how it …

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    Australia – It’s time to snap out of this sales mindset ‘slump’

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

    If you were an alien that landed in Australia you could be forgiven for thinking that we were in the midst of a terrible recession or major disaster by the ‘doom and gloom’ sentiment that seems to be hanging over our economy like a wet blanket.

    Of course, it is natural for all economies to go through ups and downs, but after 22 years of continuous economic growth we seem to have forgotten how to deal with the down swing. But how much of a down swing are we actually experiencing right now? Our current economic growth rate is still 3.5%. …

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    Sales Trend 8 – A Radical Shift in the Sales Mindset

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

    This sales trend is all about the radical shift in the sales mindset that currently is underway in organisations as prophesised by The Cluetrain Manifesto 15 years ago. A slow burn, we acknowledge, but with consumers in such a powerful position, product no longer the centre piece of the sale, and value being more important than price, the time has come for sales teams and everyone in their businesses to work with customers, helping them achieve their goals and, in doing so, sales teams will achieve theirs.

    Smart companies are moving from …

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    Are you serious?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Success

    Today’s article is a bit of a rant I have to admit. I wrote the text below after one of those phone calls I receive, and as you may tell, I was a bit upset afterwards. Bear with me though, I’m sure you’ll see the point I’m trying to make.

    Have you ever considered how much it costs and how much effort it takes to become and remain a highly skilled professional these days? Think about a competent marketing manager, a skilled engineer or IT specialist, a capable accountant, bookkeeper, publicist or journalist, a reliable chef, event manager or hairdresser? We’re …

    Are you serious? Read Post »

    7 things you can do to immediately improve your sales operations

    By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Training, Success

    Sales operations are complex systems with many moving parts. It is a constant juggling act for many sales leaders and business heads. What with:

    Designing an effective sales strategy , right sizing sales teams , picking the right sales segments to sell to, delivering the right level of sales training, coaching their sales team, dealing with under-performers, key accounts management, managing and reporting on sales financials, liaising and linking with other departments across the value chain, boosting team morale, and so on.

    It’s a very complex role. So where to start?

    Here are 7 things you can do …

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