Sales Cheerleader or Genuine Sales Coach?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership

Admit it, we all like a bit of encouragement every now and then. Yes, there are those who want it on a more frequent basis than others but whatever our frequency it’s nice when we have someone cheering us on, someone in our camp who wants to see us succeed.

I remember many years ago, in 1993, running my first ever half marathon at the Melbourne Marathon and how important encouragement became as I neared the end of the run. For me to run a half marathon was a new and daunting task as my main sport is swimming. I had …

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2015 Sales Trends Event – How to sell better in a complex world

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Leadership, Sales Trends, Strategy, Success

On Wednesday 6 May we hosted our 2015 Barrett 12 Sales Trends Annual Business Breakfast where many senior business and sales leaders came to hear about and discuss the theme for the event this year, ‘Transparency and the Middle Path’ – How to sell better in a complex world. It was great to see the room filled to capacity again as it was for the inaugural event last year.

It also gave us the opportunity to formally celebrate our 20th year in business and thank the Barrett team and our clients and supporters, many of whom were there …

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Courageous Sales Leadership and a compelling Sales Mission

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

Are you the type of person who looks back and dreams of the ‘good ‘ol days’ or the sort of person who looks forward to the future searching for what can be?

It may or may not surprise you that many more people look back rather than forward to what is possible. Wanting things to remain the same, for whatever reason, be it for power, fear of change, loss of face, etc. many people can find themselves with their heads in the proverbial sand as the world passes them by.

Off the back of the article from last week …

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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 …

    Top 13 Sales Issues for businesses in 2014 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 …

    7 things you can do to immediately improve your sales operations Read Post »

    Sales Trend 3: Sales Excellence Managers to find their true role

    By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Training, Sales Trends

    The third Sales Trend for 2014 is Sales Excellence Managers will find their real role. Historically, organisations employed sales training managers with the mandate of sourcing the best sales training and development materials, or alternatively developing sales training programmes for their organisations. However, the plethora of sales training and the confusion of training methods all being touted as ‘best practice’, coupled with the lack of training for sales managers led many sales training managers to expand their role, taking over much more than sales training and expanding it into part of the traditional …

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    How to give your sales force a competitive advantage

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

    Which sales trends will most affect your business?

    How can you make the most of these changes?

    How can you steer your sales strategy to deliver sustainable results?

    How can you give your sales force a competitive advantage?

    These questions were posed at the inaugural 12 Sales Trends Annual Business Breakfast hosted by Barrett.  Focusing on what to do in light of the 12 Sales Trends for 2014 – The Thinking Sales Organisation  we presented a very enlightening and informative speech on what we can do and how we can navigate our way using the 12 …

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    Are your invisible sales managers losing you sales?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Results, Sales Skills

    The number one priority for any sales manager is to lead and drive the effective sales performance of their sales team.  The only way a sales manager can achieve this is by being AVAILABLE and RESPONSIVE to his/her sales team.  What does this actually mean in real world terms?

    This means getting out from behind your desk, ditching any excessive administration, leaving internal meetings and getting out in the field and working with your sales teams. If you want to drive and lift sales performance you need to be out …

    Are your invisible sales managers losing you sales? Read Post »

    How much valuable selling time are you wasting?

    By / / Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Uncategorized

    When it comes to sales productivity and sales performance many companies are shortchanging themselves and, unfairly blaming their salespeople for poor sales performance results.

    How can that be? Well too many businesses pay salespeople for business development and then lumber them with non-revenue, non customer oriented activities such as administration, unnecessary internal meetings, service delivery or transactional account problems.  And whilst acknowledging that these are very much a part of managing the client’s experience and classified under the sales portfolio, the haphazard manner in which these are structured does little to encourage optimal live …

    How much valuable selling time are you wasting? Read Post »

    Leadership in Uncertain Times

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Sales Leadership, Sales Management

    In December 2012, like in the previous years, we published the 12 Sales Trends Report for 2013 and released a brief summary of each trend. Throughout the year we will look into each of them a little deeper. This month we are focusing on the Sales Trend “Leadership in uncertain times”.

    Extreme uncertainty is the new norm.  Living in a constant state of fear and anxiety only leads to more fear and anxiety. Research shows that highly distracted or stressed people don’t and can’t innovate and change and without purposeful leadership and reason …

    Leadership in Uncertain Times Read Post »

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