Why your company needs a Sales Strategy & Operations Audit NOW

By / / Assessments, Blog, Case study, Role Clarity, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Strategy

Despite the pandemic it looks like the GDP will be off the Richter Scale in Australia in 2022. So how will businesses set themselves up to navigate the sales growth opportunities?

The answer: Conduct a Sales Strategy & Operations Audit.  

However, sales strategy is too often neglected, and it can be the difference between business failure and profitability.

For example, in December 2017, I met with the newly appointed Executive GM of a $4B publicly listed company operating in an essential wholesale and distribution channel. The business was in a whole world of pain including sales and share price …

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Case Study – Human-centred Sales Systems Transformation

By / / Blog, Case study, Human-centred, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Strategy, Success

The client: a $4B division of a listed corporation specialising in Wholesale & Retail. The division is a combination of B2B sales (wholesale), B2C sales across several retail brands, service areas, marketing, and procurement and it includes 200+ people.

The challenges when we started working with them late 2017-early 2018:

  • The business had acquired a mix of companies over the years and there was no integration, no common language, no consistency, etc.
  • The business was in flux and sales and share price were in decline.
  • There was poor customer retention.
  • Several key brands were being disrupted.
  • Sales and services teams were not trained to deliver to …

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kick start your sales growth

Seven Things to Kick Start Sales Growth in the New FY

By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, covid-19, Customer Service, Education in Sales, Learning and Development, Opportunity, Remote selling, Sales Growth, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Sales Tips, Sales Training, Strategy

No mucking around. Let’s get straight to the point.

Things have changed -dramatically- as a result of COVID with new opportunities and markets emerging, old ways of doing things in decline, leaders and teams needing to rethink how we do business, and customers trying out different ways of buying and engaging with suppliers. There’s no time to stand still it seems, but that is what we need to do sometimes to catch our breath, reset, and look at what we need to do next.

So here are 7 things you can do to get real sales traction and sustainable sales and business …

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Sales Strategy – more than tactics & incremental growth

By / / Blog, Case study, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Strategy

Corporate, business, and marketing strategies are often too broad, or too focused on either financial or brand results only as to offer any clear direction to a sales team. Which means the support, focus, direction, standards, and mission of a sales operation is often reduced to little more than generating more business at better margins.

Because of this broader focus on the bigger picture, sales strategies all too often become a series of tactical activities that do little more than support marketing. In the end all that this achieves is making sales an expensive, frustrating exercise with salespeople …

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2020 Sales Trends Virtual Event – The Time is NOW

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Collaboration, Common Ground, covid-19, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Human-centred, Opportunity, Optimism, Remote selling, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Sales Trends, Selling Better

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What a year it has been. 

On Friday 13th March, as we were observing the COVID-19 situation we decided to postpone the Barrett Annual Sales Trend Breakfast, planned for March 25th.

Nine months later, on 25 November, we hosted our event virtually. We explored the 2020 Sales Trends, which seem to be even more relevant now than when we wrote them. For our virtual event we assembled our …

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How a Sales System reduces execution risk

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Sales Strategy, Sales System, Strategy, Uncategorized

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Most businesses have a strategy, but it doesn’t matter how talented the C-suite and leaders in the organisation are, or how renowned their consultants are,  60% to 70% of businesses fail to execute their strategies. Research done on the topic has found different reasons for this, ranging from lack of experience in implementation to poor internal communication. I won’t get into that here. I want …

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Where have businesses been exposed during the crisis when it comes to Sales?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, covid-19, CRM, Prospecting, Remote selling, Sales Culture, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, Strategy

When the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the world in early 2020 it was nearly impossible to imagine the effect it was going to have in our lives and how it was going to affect our businesses and livelihoods.

Since March 2020, we have been tracking what’s happening with a range of businesses across markets and what they are doing, or not doing as the case may be, to adapt their sales processes, sales teams and strategies to stay in business, attract and retain customers, and sell better in the New Normal.

Having engaged with hundreds of leaders, including SME business owners …

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Navigating the Brave New World of Sales

Adapting the sales strategy & processes of your business to sell better in the New Normal

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Business Acumen, covid-19, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Strategy

Within every crisis lies the demise of some and the making of others. Within every crisis also lies a myriad of opportunities.

Those first movers who gain an early advantage will realise the opportunities first in the new normal and make it harder for the competition to match.

So when it comes to the making or breaking of businesses, especially during a crisis, having a clear purpose, an adaptive sales strategy, effective sales processes and proactive, agile sales teams are key. This means that our businesses need to read and quickly adapt to the changes in market dynamics then pivot, if need …

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A ready-to-go program to avoid the ‘Insolvency Tsunami’ & save your business

By / / Blog, Collaboration, covid-19, Education in Sales, Entrepreneurship, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Essentials, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Strategy, Success

I read an article in The Age, Thursday 23 July 2020 about how some of the major banks are warning against jumping on the debt bandwagon to save businesses during the crisis, despite the tax payer backed loan scheme. I couldn’t agree more. Any self-respecting business, especially SMEs cannot and shouldn’t borrow more money if they do not have some certainty about where their business opportunities, customers, and sales revenue is going to come from now and in the future.

Earlier in the week I also read a press release by Kate Carnell, the Australian Small Business & Family Enterprise Ombudsman, which …

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Lessons I’m learning about myself & my business during COVID-19

By / / Blog, covid-19, Entrepreneurship, Ethics & Values, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy

This crisis is, in my humble opinion, a test of character for me and I would say for many other people.

It has put everything I care for, value and taken for granted on notice. Not that I wasn’t aware of or didn’t pay attention to these things before. I am a very attentive and purposeful person; however, this pandemic has put everything on the table for a thorough examination.

I recall, as the COVID-19 shutdown hit, the very first thing I did was gather my team together and I said this:

“Our number one goal is to stay together and …

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