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Humans at the Centre of Buying & Selling

By / / Blog, Buying, Customer experience, Customer Service, Human-centred, Sales Process Maps, Sales Trends, sales-process-map

Sales Trend 10 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2023 is about the importance of designing human-centred buying-selling-servicing processes.

In 30 seconds

Buying-selling-servicing processes are the collection of interactions that take place between buyers and sellers. In B2B, these processes often lack structure, relying on personalities rather than procedures, risking client retention. B2C giants prioritise digital channels, often neglecting the customer experience.

To address these issues, businesses are embracing human-centred engagement and design. They seek to create less stressful, more meaningful interactions that consider ease and meaning for customers. The Net Easy Score (NES) measures interaction simplicity, while human-centred design focuses on understanding people’s needs and motivations.

These approaches shift away from rigid processes, emphasising human interactions, and balancing digital and in-person engagement.

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What Sales Mapping Projects Can Reveal

By / / Blog, Business Growth, Leadership, Sales Leadership, Sales Process Maps, sales-process-map, Uncategorized

In 30 seconds

Sales process mapping is essential for delivering sales strategies and setting quality standards for sales and service teams. Beyond its known benefits, it uncovers valuable insights. For instance, one company’s overly strict credit department rejected many good deals, only revealed through mapping. Another organisation’s convoluted client engagement process led to internal conflicts and client dissatisfaction, causing 50% of new clients to leave within a few months of being onboarded. Such information is invaluable to leadership for transformation. Openness to challenging findings is key. Sales and service processes, being deeply human experiences, require assessment, mapping, alignment with business goals, …

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From Personality Cults to Sales Process Maps: Rethinking Sales Success

By / / Blog, Sales performance, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results, sales-process-map, Success

In 30 seconds

Sales success has long been built around personalities, leaving new salespeople to emulate revered individuals without much success. A well-defined sales process is a quicker and more effective way to get new hires up to speed. A sales process map outlines the steps, activities, tasks, and behaviours of how your business sells and services. By incorporating the best practices of your top salespeople and aligning them with your sales strategy, you empower new hires to adopt and make the process their own. This approach allows them to observe successful salespeople applying the process, assess their own competence, and …

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Sales Process – A roadmap to sales success

By / / Blog, Customer experience, Sales Process Maps, Success

Imagine navigating through a big city without a roadmap or a sat nav system. If you’re lucky and have experience (aka a history of trial and error), or are good at recognising landmarks, you may work out a preferred route, but it may not be the best or fastest route you can take. If you are new to the city or to driving, or if your favourite route is blocked your journey may be more unpredictable, more time consuming, more frustrating, and random.

A sales process provides the same kind of orientation and direction that a navigation system does. It …

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What is your top sales concern in 2022?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Communication, Remote selling, Sales Culture, Sales Process Maps, Sales Relationships, Sales Tips

In August 2020 I wrote an article about where businesses had been exposed during the pandemic crisis.

At that time, having conversations with business leaders across Australia and internationally, we found the following 11 ‘cracks’ as the most common to have appeared in their sales systems:

  • CRM – The lack of quality and accuracy of customer data
  • No Sales Strategy – zip, nothing, zero
  • A reactive and short-term approach to sales
  • No proactive prospecting activity, capability, and discipline
  • Lack of support and training for sales team to help them keep selling while at different stages of lockdown
  • An overreliance on networking events to get …

    • What is your top sales concern in 2022? Read Post »

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    How a Sales Process helps your sales team sell better, faster

    By / / Blog, Role Clarity, Sales Process Maps, Sales Tips, sales-process-map

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    The most current and effective iteration of the modern sales profession has been around for the last 15-20 years i.e. client centric solution selling, and yet, most salespeople still learn how to sell by default, not design.

    The perpetual whinging by various CEOs and sales leaders of ‘Why can’t my average sales performers be like my top performers?’ or ‘It takes too long to get my new …

    How a Sales Process helps your sales team sell better, faster Read Post »

    Using ‘Intelligent Practice’ to enhance Sales Mastery & Results

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales performance, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

    In a time poor world, many people including sales leaders and salespeople often bemoan the fact that they cannot seem to make time for important things like continued professional development, coaching, and thorough planning thus leaving their evolution and sales results to chance.

    Rushing through the day, responding to ‘urgent’ matters and deadlines, getting in and out of sales meetings as quickly as possible, doing the bare minimum with CRM and reporting, with little or no time for reflection or developing mastery in their core capabilities seems to be the lot of many sales teams today.

    When we rush through tasks, client …

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    What does Selling Better mean to sales team’s retention rates?

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Essentials, Sales Process Maps, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Uncategorized

    What do you make of this statistic?

    The average tenure of a sales representative across Europe and USA is currently 15 months.

    Ouch!

    There are other stats that also show the average staff turnover can be anything around 25-50% per annum, or more in some cases.  Some call centres experience turnover rates of over 70% per annum.

    These statistics are alarming because the costs associated with poor engagement and high staff turnover are monumental and can manifest in many ways including decline in sales, poor customer service, loss of reputation leading to more loss of customers and employees, and impaired recruitment. If not addressed, …

    What does Selling Better mean to sales team’s retention rates? Read Post »

    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 …

    Get more sales by aligning your sales process to the buying process Read Post »

    Don’t die wondering, the real secret to sales success – Part I of II: the business

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Innovation, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Pioneer, Sales Process Maps, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Strategy, Success

    I know, I know, I know.

    How many times have we seen the ‘Secrets to Sales Success’ plastered over the internet only to be left disappointed?

    Usually, these ‘secrets’, once you look into them, either leave you feeling duped because of the unethical biases they take, or you are left with lots of little bits and pieces of advice that are ok but they are not coordinated in a manner that you can manage and move forward with them.

    Like the diet and wellness industries, you could spend a lifetime trying to work out what you should do to improve your chances at …

    Don’t die wondering, the real secret to sales success – Part I of II: the business Read Post »

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