Selling Better, Faster – Total Sales Team Turnaround

By / / Case study, Optimism, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales performance, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, sales-process-map, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Systems Thinking

I’m feeling elated and vindicated yet again.

I’m feeling very optimistic about the future of sales systems and sales stewardship.

Two weeks ago I sat down with a very large key B2B client of ours to do a two year retrospective on their Selling Better Project. Considering where we started with this Executive General Manager  discussing his major issues, concerns, ideas and opportunities around their lack of sales strategy, sales operational framework and sales processes, the lack of stewardship and coordinated discipline within the national sales team, the turnaround and results have been thrilling on many levels:

  • Sales are up 8% and steadily …

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The key differences between B2C & B2B Sales Market Segmentation

By / / Collaboration, Education in Sales, Marketing, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Strategy, Success

A word of caution, this topic can be very tricky as there are various schools of thought around what is a segment and how to segment, with Marketing Segmentation being the most well known in business circles. However, for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on an area that is less well known but equally important – Sales Market Segmentation with a particular emphasis on B2B sales.

At Barrett, we do a lot of work with B2B sales and marketing teams in helping them define their sales market segments so they are very clear …

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How prepared is ‘The Lucky Country’ for tough times?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Collaboration, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Opportunity, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy, Success, Uncategorized

Ah the good times…

Ah 28 years of uninterrupted growth…

Ah Australia, ‘The Lucky Country’*…

Ah ‘How good is Australia?’…

Pssst. But don’t talk about the R** word…

We are indeed fortunate in Australia to have access to many resources, space, and talented people; however, our luck maybe running out if we carry on drinking the ‘recession avoidance’ Kool Aid, carry on with our old ways of managing business and thinking everything is rosy instead of adapting to the array of changes, challenges, and opportunities that are out there in the market place.

Which is why I couldn’t go past economist Jim Stanford’s comments in Paddy …

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Debunking myths for the Common Good

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Common Ground, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Gratitude, Resilience, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Success, Sustainability & Environment

If you had to put a percentage weighting on the following questions what would your answers look like?

  • How much of your individual success so far is solely down to your own efforts?
  • How much of your individual success so far is as a result of the success of your community – where you were born, what family you were raised in, what school you went to, networks, friends, government support, infrastructure and the era in which you live?

    • It’s probably impossible to give definitive answers to these questions; however, I suspect, like me, you are aware that much of our individual success …

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    The Sales Juggling Act: how to keep your eye on the sales prize

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Case study, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better

    Sales is integral to business. Without sales we don’t have a business.

    But running a sales operation, leading the sales effort and guiding and directing a sales team can be a constant juggling act. Sales operations have many moving parts and they all require constant vigilance and effective decision making. The execution risk is always high.

    Sales operations and teams are also fragile ecosystems. Set up well to perform to a standard, they require constant hands-on leadership and stewardship; it’s like keeping a set of spinning plates spinning. Take your eyes off those sales plates for a second and everything can come …

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    Avoiding a Kodak Moment: A positive Case Study on managing change for better sales & business

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Case study, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Success

    A positive Case Study on managing change, pain and quick wins in line with a Long Term Strategy

    Human beings, by and large, are notorious for staying with what is familiar to them and not wanting to ‘rock the boat’, instead chasing the familiar quick fix, the easy option, that which feels safe and comfortable.

    ‘Why not get as much out of today as I can and to hell with the future’. Boom and bust mentality.

    ‘We’ve always done it this way, no need to change’. Staying in our comfort zone mentality.

    ‘If it’s not broken, why fix it?’ Not keeping an open mind …

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    How to sell better in uncertain times

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Mindful selling, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Management, Sales Strategy

    Here we go again.

    Global disarray, government elections, political scandals of betrayal and corruption. How do we keep our head when everyone else around us is losing theirs? How are we supposed to lead business and keep selling better when there’s a general feeling of uncertainty that makes decision making so difficult?

    There are those of us who have been around in business for some time now. Many of us have been through a few major crises before such as the GFC and the major recession we had in the early 1990s. Things weren’t pretty, for sure, and yes there was a …

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    Check the ‘Sales Fitness’ of your Sales System

    By / / Sales Benchmarking, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Systems Thinking

    For those people who have been reading my work for some time know that in order to achieve peak sales fitness, now and in the long term, I advocate that business and sales leaders and their sales teams need to adopt a Systems approach to sales operational excellence in order to sell better, deliver competitive sales strategies that work, find new uncontested markets and at the same time minimising execution risk on the ground.

    My persistence in promoting and advocating for a Systems approach to sales excellence is deliberate on every level because if we want to stay in business and …

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    Less IS More when it comes to Sales Planning & Market Segmentation

    By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Market Segmentation, Sales Planning, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy, Success

    Less Is More when it comes to doing good strategy, sales planning and market segmentation.

    As Michael Porter, Professor and ‘Father’ of Competitive Strategy (Harvard Business School), says:

    • The essence of good strategy is choosing what not to do;
    • The essence of strategy is that you must set limits on what you are trying to accomplish; and
    • Strategy 101 is about choices. You cannot be all things to all people. It’s about making choices, trade-offs. It’s about being deliberately different

    This is the essence of good strategy, yet time and time again we see many sales teams experiencing …

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    Sales Trend 6: Moving CX & HX – really it’s all about people now

    By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Selling Better, Strategy

    Sales Trend 6 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2018 is about the ‘human experience’ in businesses and sales.

    The terms Customer Experience and Customer Centric have been around for some time. These terms are now referred to in shorthand as CX. Now a new term is emerging – HX, the Human Experience.

    What does all this mean? Aren’t they the same thing?

    This sales trend explores the terms CX and HX and helps put into perspective the old and the new when it comes to creating a competitive winning edge in sales and business.

    Let’s look at some definitions first:

    In commerce, customer …

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