How should sales teams adapt to changes in the marketplace?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Strategy

It is a harsh reality – product demand and brand scores are down. Some contributing factors to this decline are: bad experiences with retailers or suppliers, poor responses from intermediaries, mediocre service levels, automated procurement practices, stripped down pricing, and an increased number of competitors with products that are just as good and brand names that are just as well respected.

In the face of this growing complexity and a challenging global economic environment, salespeople face continuing demands to meet higher sales quotas. And this in markets most likely suffering from already squeezed margins, and buyers who are sceptical and reluctant …

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First Aid Kit for a Sales Recovery

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Call Reluctance, Education in Sales, Prospecting, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips

Many of us have been there and some of us are yet to experience the gut wrenching experience when we finally, consciously realise that our sales pipeline and revenue numbers are in drastic decline and we are in deep, deep trouble. We realise all too dramatically that we are having the business and sales equivalent of a heart attack.

The brutal facts finally hit us hard in our face, our chest, our guts and we realise we may not survive.

Yet, the causes and signs were there for us all to see. Like a heart attack, a combination of activities caused this …

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How to find more sales growth

By / / Sales Consulting, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips

Many companies in B2B sales are looking for more growth in their respective market segments; however, their sales and business leaders are still looking at their markets as whole segments rather than seeing and seizing the lucrative opportunities that micro segmentation can bring.

Without effective micro-segmentation, businesses risk missing niche or unique opportunities and/or needlessly increasing the cost of sales across the segment as a whole. To micro-segment a market effectively, you need to consider (at both the macro and micro levels) the size of each sales segment and the purchasing drivers of relevant customers. From …

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The Power of a Value Proposition

By / / Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Value Proposition & Value Add

Many businesses and their sales teams are finding that they -or more importantly what they offer- are being lumped into the same basket as their competitors with customers perceiving little difference between each supplier in their respective categories. Often researching online, customers trawl through website after website comparing the latest offerings, making up their own minds about who and what they want with little or no help of the supplier companies. This perceived similarity leads to one variable becoming the main point of difference and negotiation: …

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20 years of improving sales teams & operations. What’s changed?

By / / Collaboration, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, CRM, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Social Media, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The 9th January 2015 marks 20 years in business for Barrett Consulting Group.

Twenty years of helping companies, sales leaders and their salespeople improve their sales operations and their sales capabilities.

Twenty years of helping salespeople and buyers have better, more mutually rewarding experiences, setting a fairer exchange of value.

As I moved toward this 20th anniversary, I started to muse upon what the sales world was like 20 years ago, compared to what it is like now. Here are just some of my initial musings and observations.

A lot has changed in the sales world over the last 20 years, some changes for …

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The legitimisation of Sales Strategy

By / / Marketing, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

The 10th Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘The Legitimisation of Sales Strategy’

Having a sales strategy is now of vital importance to the survival, growth and profitability of any organisation. Yet Sales Strategy, as a business discipline, has been poorly understood by sales managers and executive leadership teams alike, and rarely, if ever, executed well by many businesses… however, times are indeed changing.

Sales Strategy is how the business organises its sales efforts across the value chain to go to market, who it is going to sell to and how it …

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What does a successful sales team & culture look like?

By / / Sales Culture, Sales Results, Sales Strategy

Creating a viable, healthy, fit, and robust sales team and supporting culture takes effort, consistent effort. It doesn’t happen by chance. We have to be able to hold in our grasp –our thinking, our frame of reference– several aspects including purpose, strategy, performance standards, people, competition, change, technology, and of course, all of the variables outside of our direct control such as PEST (politics, economic, society, technology) or STEER.

The biggest issues that keep most sales teams from being and consistently performing at their best are:

  • No sales strategy to direct and guide the sales team and business
  • The …

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How to link your Business Strategy to Sales Strategy

By / / Sales Strategy, Strategy, Uncategorized

For too long now sales has lived in the shadow of corporate and marketing strategies, but these tend to provide limited direction. They are usually too broad and generalised or too narrow, only focused on financial results. That makes them of little tangible value in the pragmatic world doing business. That being said Selling is often seen by management as the unit that gets the business in; a tactical function in the value chain at best.

However, selling is much more complex than just getting in business. Selling is where the ‘rubber hits the road’; where the concept of micro-marketing and …

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Sales Trend 5 – The move to Micro Sales Segmentation

By / / Education in Sales, Marketing, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Since 2009 we have been publishing our Annual 12 Sales Trends reports. It has been very interesting to see the speed at which these trends are taking hold and becoming the new normal in business. Here is the fifth Sales Trend for 2014 – The Move to Micro Sales Segmentation.

In 2014 sales teams are dealing with specific complexities (down markets, knowledgeable buyer, buyers with the pressure to cut costs, buyers that are ill-informed, etc). The approach that Marketing has to segmentation doesn’t completely deal with these …

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What we cannot control in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Competition, Resilience, Sales Research, Sales Strategy

Last week we talked about what we can control and influence in sales, especially in uncertain times.  This week is looking at what we cannot control in sales and how to learn to live with it.

What (and who) we cannot control

Let’s face it, we operate in a complex world where many things are outside our direct control and influence, yet these very things can influence and affect ourselves, our clients, markets, and communities. There are some very interesting frameworks that can help us separate out a range of factors that affect our market places, communities, and countries.

  • [1]PEST analysis (‘Political, Economic, …

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