Without a Strategic Sales Force, you are doomed to fail

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Success

A strategic sales force – one driven by a focused sales strategy and robust sales operation framework rather than a panel-beaten corporate / marketing strategy or territory plan for capturing incremental share of spend, is a highly treasured asset. A strategic sales force will deliver better results for the organisation’s customers and as a result, for the organisation itself.

A great case study for sales strategy and a strategic sales force.

When we met mid last year, the relatively new Sales Director of the Australian Asia Pac division of a major global equipment manufacturer, was facing declining markets, loss of major accounts, …

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Sales Trend 5 – The Way We Sell Around Here

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 5 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 Report is ‘The way we sell around here’.

The Sales Dream – A low cost, high performing sales force that delivers more sales at better margins to increasingly loyal customers. Sounds like some utopian vision. Not necessarily.

This sales trend highlights the best practices being adopted by smart companies who are focused on embedding ‘How We Sell Around Here’ as their minimum standard of sales excellence and how they are reaping the rewards of their continuous learning programmes and sound sales strategies. They know that if any business …

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Sales Trend 4 – Sales & Marketing Unite

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 4 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is Sales & Marketing Unite.

For too many years there have been various degrees of finger-pointing and strained relations between the Sales and Marketing departments, and in too many cases open hostility. The ‘us and them’ approach has kept these two important disciplines at arms’ length from each other. This undoubtedly diminishes the power and potential of their united efforts. Management has long called for sales and marketing to bury the hatchet, but the requests often lack urgency and are generally met with indifference.

With shrinking markets, micro segments, more informed buyers …

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How to create a new sales routine that delivers results

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Training

We all know that creating a better sales team, better sales culture, better sales leadership and better sales strategy that delivers better sales results does not happen by attending the occasional sales training workshop. Though it doesn’t stop sales leaders from opting for the ‘quick fix’ annual sales workshop to show that they are ‘doing something’ to drive better sales results. In short, these leaders would be better off doing nothing and saving their money, time and effort.

Metaphorically speaking, the sales training workshop (or 1-5 days depending on how much money you have to spend) is the tail of the …

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12 Sales Trends for 2016: Sales Trend 1 – Beyond Profit Erosion

By / / Sales Research, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 1 of Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is “Beyond Profit Erosion”.

After decades of revenue and profit growth markets are no longer what they used to be. The current situation of profit erosion has been decades in the making with a combination of factors including:

  • Low interest rates and the abundance of cheap money creating the conditions for growth mainly through Mergers & Acquisitions
  • Cost cutting to reduce duplication and redundancies and grow profits
  • Technology and automation having taken over many labour intensive processes
  • Buyers’ stripping apart of complex offers into their individual parts thus diminishing or dismissing the …

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How to sell better in uncertain times

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips

You could be forgiven for starting off 2016 in a rather pessimistic manner given all the ‘doom and gloom’ being spread about economic growth issues, the decline of share markets across the globe and talk of another GFC. Don’t get me wrong, we need to be vigilant and able to adapt and, even if everything that is being predicted turns out to be true, we still need to keep moving forward and seek out the right opportunities to focus on.

In short, how do we keep our head when everyone else around us is losing theirs?

There are those of us who …

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David Bowie – a role model for all entrepreneurs

By / / Business Acumen, Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Life Skills, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Self Promotion, Success

The sad passing of David Bowie this last week has brought a huge wave of emotional outpouring from many parts of the world including myself. I grew up with David Bowie. He has been in my life as long as I can remember. He was, I admit, my most favourite  music star of all. I loved everything about him and remember him with much love and affection. I have the books and albums, I have been to his concerts, and most recently attended that wonderful exhibition ‘David Bowie is’ which tracked his life and highlighted his contributions to music, art, …

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Sales Systems Thinking, the key to effective sales strategy and operations

By / / Business Acumen, Sales Strategy

As I have previously written one of our biggest issues in running effective sales operations and executing effective sales strategies is the persistence of ‘point’ or ‘silver bullet’ solutions that mislead and distract. If you recall, a point solution solves one particular problem without regard to related issues and unfortunately, point solutions often don’t deliver meaningful or sustainable results.

That is why we need to embrace Systems Thinking as the way to lead and manage sales teams and operations.

What is Systems Thinking?

Systems Thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system’s constituent …

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Survival of the Adaptive P3: Use Effective Sales Metrics

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Performance Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Strategy

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

Part 3 is all about using effective metrics to track sales

In an ideal world, the financial returns and the ability of the sales force to generate business at respectable margins would be precisely calculated, and deciding the effectiveness of any sales strategy would be simple. In reality however, there are multiple, and usually imperfect ways to measure most …

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Survival of the Adaptive P1: focus on changing buying habits

By / / Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Social Sales, Solution Selling

Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is often misquoted as being ‘the survival of the fittest’ when in fact it is ‘the survival of the most adaptive’. And that is how we need to be if we want to survive and thrive in these ever changing markets – adaptive.

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

One of the ways sales teams can adapt and really get ahead of the curve …

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