‘How to manage and help salesmen’ – valuable lessons from 1960

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Uncategorized

You might be taken aback by the sexist nature of the title of this article ‘How to manage and help salesmen’.

However, if you take into account that this title comes from a book written in 1960 by Charles B. Roth you might be a bit more forgiving.

I was given this book by my late father a couple of years before he died in 2014. Given my profession and his career as a business owner and chief sales leader of his company he thought I would like to read it and see how much had changed or not …

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Is your sales problem really a sales leadership problem?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Talent

Of course every business wants their sales people to prospect more, close more sales, produce more consistent sales results, achieve their sales targets/budgets, have happy, loyal clients, and so on.

Some of the most common questions we hear from sales managers, sales leaders and CEOs are:

‘How do we get our sales people to sell more, produce better sales results?’

‘How do we find better sales people who can sell?’

If you look at the overwhelming content on the internet about sales problems and issues it focuses mostly on sales people and their performance…. “how to sell more” is the most common search term.

However, …

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It’s all about Opportunity: A future – disrupted & reimagined

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Innovation, Life Skills, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Pioneer, Success

On December 4 (Melbourne) and 6 (Sydney) 2017, Barrett will be attending The Future: Disrupted and Reimagined event featuring Malcolm Gladwell, author of five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, and Steven Levitt, economist and co-author of Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think Like A Freak and When To Rob a Bank.

Gladwell and Levitt are some of the world’s most interesting and outstanding writers talking about the 21st century world and how we can rethink and reimagine our future in times of great …

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2017 Sales Trend 6 – Where are All the High Performance Sales Coaches?

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 6 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about sales coaching.

This sales trend focuses on how sales coaching is still lagging behind business coaching as a standard business discipline, but how the best sales leaders are using coaching to transform their sales teams and sales performances to maximise success. So what’s going on with sales coaching?

A lot has been written about coaching, specifically business coaching, over the years and the proof is that coaching, like anything if applied effectively, does work. For instance, the International Coach Federation (ICF) conducted a worldwide survey …

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The power of Sales Process Maps to deliver best sales practice

By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Process Maps, Sales Talent

Most new salespeople are thrown in the deep end when it comes to sales induction.

“Here go out with Josephine, our best sales person and be like her.”

Most salespeople, in general, are given no articulated sales process which means there’s nothing specific to be coached or trained to or to follow.

In sales teams we often have the blind leading the blind when it comes to achieving sales best practice.

Why? Because most businesses do not have an articulated sales process map(s) for their salespeople to follow. They treat selling as an action not as a profession with clearly defined …

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Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Self Promotion

On 19-20 April I had the privilege of chairing the 2-day conference: Women in Sales Leadership – Visions of Success in Sydney where we had over 100 women and 4 men attend.

The attendees were given the opportunity to hear from and interact with 16 of Australia’s leading female sales leaders and three male sales leaders and explore how they have created and charted their own visions of success.

Key topics discussed included:

  • Setting goals and planning for career growth
  • Defining your WHY?
  • Don’t let career breaks pause your progression
  • Finding the right Sponsors and Mentors and how to involve men on your career journey
  • Establishing your …

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Selling Better Case Study: How to do it properly

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Sales Strategy

A Barrett Selling Better Case Study

Here is a brief snap shot of the current results of a major Selling Better project we started with one of our clients in 2015: 60 salespeople plus managers in a mid-tier speciality banking and finance company, Australia.

  • 130% of sales budget year to date
  • Sales pipeline confirmed business out to 24 weeks versus previous 14 week benchmark
  • Sales team realignment to match higher value customer market opportunities
  • Sales team finding and winning larger, more profitable sales with better quality clients
  • Customer retention (of the right kind of customers) at 100%
  • The CVP (customer value proposition) has been adopted across the …

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2016 Sales Trend 11 – The Renaissance Sales Manager

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 11 for our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is The Renaissance Sales Manager.

The logic follows that senior executives determine the Grand Strategy for the entire business, divisional executives determine what strategy they need for the segments they service so as to make the grand strategy work, and then sales managers need to deploy, direct and control the sales resources to make the strategy(ies) happen. Sales managers should play a pivotal role in making strategy happen and delivering results.

Yet, for some time now where big data has been, and still is, a big focus …

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Why we need Progressive Approximation to design an effective sales strategy

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Strategy

In the world of big data, the abundance of information, complex systems and the need to use good judgement to make sound decisions, many people, often overwhelmed by too many variables, default to single moments of truth, black and white solutions, and the promise of the ‘right’ answer in an attempt to solve the challenges they face.

It’s understandable that we want simple answers. Our brains love ‘simple’ because it is energy efficient and comforting. Once we have ‘the answer’ we don’t have to think, we can just do.

Looking for ‘simple’ in business is at best lazy and, at worst, very …

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Without a Strategic Sales Force, you are doomed to fail

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Success

A strategic sales force – one driven by a focused sales strategy and robust sales operation framework rather than a panel-beaten corporate / marketing strategy or territory plan for capturing incremental share of spend, is a highly treasured asset. A strategic sales force will deliver better results for the organisation’s customers and as a result, for the organisation itself.

A great case study for sales strategy and a strategic sales force.

When we met mid last year, the relatively new Sales Director of the Australian Asia Pac division of a major global equipment manufacturer, was facing declining markets, loss of major accounts, …

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