Sustainability – the new criteria

By / / Brand & Reputation, Ethics & Values, Sales Strategy, Sustainability & Environment, Value Proposition & Value Add

What is your position on SUSTAINABILITY?

What community improvement activities is your company involved with?

These are questions, among many others, that my team and I are responding to for a Request For Proposal (RFP) document for a sales training project with a large Australian Corporation. This is the first time we have been asked to respond to these questions in a formal manner and legitimise our position on ‘sustainability’. As sales people and as business owners, not only are we being asked to legitimise our product offering, our service standards, etc. we are now required to articulate our stand …

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Preparing for your 2008-09 Sales Year

By / / Business Acumen, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Planning, Sales Strategy, Value Proposition & Value Add, Vision, Mission & Purpose

If you haven’t already it may be worth your while to hold a formal review and business/sales strategy planning session with your team before the new financial year kicks in. Many markets have and are going through major changes and this requires us to be on our toes and ready for action.

The challenge for any business, especially those of us who run a small business with limited man power and resources, is to take the time out to work on our business and plan for the future rather than stay stuck in the day to day of our businesses. This …

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Not all customers are good customers

By / / Business Acumen, Ethics & Values, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy

Ever had some customers who spend very little with you but take up enormous amounts of your time? Nothing’s ever right, they quibble about every cent and they do not intend to spend much with you anyway.

Or those customers who are really nice and you get along with them very well, but you know they do not have the potential to develop into long-term revenue generating accounts for your business.

What do you do? You need sales, but at what cost to your business? These types of customers, in effect, keep you from working with customers where you can get a …

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Costing cutting at the expense of sales? Bad move

By / / Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Training

I don’t know about you, but when markets start to tighten or when things feel a bit uncertain, instead of cost cutting and bunkering down, I have found that you need to do precisely the opposite. You need to invest in your sales efforts with good strategy, sales training, good sales management and good sales coaching.

I have experienced selling in tight markets over the years and found these times to be some of my most successful sales years. Why? Because I took advantage of everyone else’s pessimistic approach as they sat around complaining, and I got out there and learned …

Costing cutting at the expense of sales? Bad move Read Post »

Motivation or manipulation?

By / / Ethics & Values, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy

What is the line between motivating sales staff and manipulating sales staff? How do you make sure you don’t go over the line and place people under extreme pressure to achieve?

Research both here and overseas shows that high performing sales people identified how important it was to their performance that they remain motivated, which they recognised can be influenced by both internal and external factors, with a sense of self satisfaction found to be the most important contributor to their motivation.

The recent 4 Corners program on Telstra staff and a bullying culture that is supposed to be being cultivated in …

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Exceeding customers’ expectations?

By / / Communication, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Teamwork

If I hear “Oh let’s exceed our customers’ expectations” one more time I will scream.

Usually my response is: ‘Why don’t we just meet their expectations in the first place?’ Too many times the marketing hype (the promise) does not always connect with the sales expectation set up by the sales team, which doesn’t always translate into a service experience we were promised in the first place.

We are often left disappointed, jaded and, if it happens more than once, cynical.

Too many of us have stories of where we have been let down by businesses not fulfilling our expectations. We see broken …

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It’s all about the relationship – don’t they get it?

By / / Collaboration, Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy

I was out on my daily morning walk yesterday and found myself reflecting on the value of relationships – personal and professional. Due to the growth spurts of my 2 boys I often find my daily walk includes a stop at a well known bakery and our newly adopted local fruit shop. This is where my story about the power of substantial relationships has its anchor point.

For the past year I have been trying to find a new greengrocer. You see my old green grocer, Sam retired last year after 44 years in the same shop much to …

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