Back to sales basics

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, CRM, Education in Sales, Marketing, Prospecting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Essentials, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Social Media

I like to keep on top of what is current, what is emerging, and what is still an idea. This is why I make time each week to do research as it helps me navigate my way around the present and into the future. However, I am finding there is so much to read, so much to get my head around, and so much to integrate into my business that it can take up a lot of time… and it only seems to be increasing.

This is why I want to get back to basics.

As I wade through all of the …

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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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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 …

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Sales Trend 8 – Ordinary Sales Organisations Do More. Extraordinary Sales Organisations Achieve More

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Marketing, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Trends, Social Sales

Sales Trend 8 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 explore how extraordinary sales organisations can work with marketing to achieve more.

With the help of technological disruption, buyers in the past 10 years have dramatically changed how they identify opportunities, evaluate alternatives, and purchase solutions.

What has changed?

Buyers are no longer calling the vendor to learn what’s new or to request information like they did before. They have become self-educating; consuming online information whenever they wish.

  • Buyers rely less on initial telephone / in-person meetings with vendors and more on consuming information online.
  • Buyers rely less on tradeshows / networking events and …

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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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2017 Sales Trend 7 – Sell and Deliver Value or Commoditise

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Business Acumen, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

With business becoming much more complex and value harder to discern in product sales alone, Sales Trend 7, Sell and Deliver Value or Commoditise, sees business leaders making serious decisions about how to do business. In essence, they have two choices in terms of the way to run legitimate operations:

  • Run a business that sells unique solutions or customised products/services and generates reasonable margins and delivers real value beyond product. This means stepping up their game, building out their sales team’s business acumen and solution selling capabilities so as to stay relevant to their clients, add real business value and ROI, …

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    How Retail Discount Advertising negatively impacts B2B Sales – Part II

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Solution Selling

    How to shift the conversation from Price to Value

    In last week’s post we talked about how –given that every business executive is a consumer, and the amount of discount sales in the retail sector- the expectation of ‘better price’ is impacting B2B sales.

    We concluded that a more pragmatic approach is needed, based on value rather than absolute price.

    This is the point we need to understand as sales people and business leaders: the client does not really see a price, they see and are looking for value.  So our real mission as sales people is to find out what …

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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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    Sales Trend 1 – New Metrics

    By / / Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results, Sales Trends

    Sales Trend 1 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about sales metrics.

    What do we measure now?

    When we talk about sales metrics we usually think units, volumes, quota, members signed, calls made. Generally speaking, these metrics would have been put in place in an organisation at the time that the sales team was established, and (maybe) changed from time to time, usually from quota to number of calls or units, and so on.

    The current state of flux of markets and most industries is quite different from the time when the use of these metrics was best practice. …

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    How to avoid the discount trap

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Results, Sales Tips, Solution Selling

    Do you frequently discount to win business? Does your brand seem to matter less to customers today? It’s no wonder. Customers can do a Google search of your product or service and, within minutes, learn about your product, your competitors, what customers think of you, and find the lowest prices. So, with this kind of information at their fingertips, why would they need to meet with a salesperson?

    It’s a critical question in today’s selling environment – and one you need to think about if you want to sell better.

    In recent observations done by Barrett we noticed a …

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