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The decarbonised salesperson

By / / Blog, Decarbonising, Ethics & Values, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Talent, Sales Trends

Sales trend 12 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2022 explores what ‘decarbonised’ salespeople look like and how employers can attract them.

Written in collaboration with ReillyScott.

Given my long-standing public commitment to climate action and a clean green sustainable world, it may come as no surprise to readers that I receive connections, feedback, questions and requests from seasoned salespeople professionals looking to transition into ‘decarbonised/ing’ sales roles and businesses.

Many do not want to work for or be associated with businesses that are not committed to a renewable, decarbonised world.

They understand selling is the vehicle that allows …

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The Unsung Heroes of Brand Success

Recruiting and Retaining Salespeople

By / / Assessments, Blog, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Assessments, Sales Talent

Many of our clients have been looking for salespeople over the last few months and their experience seems to reflect what the stats are saying: it’s taking longer to fill these positions and the turnover is higher.

Our sales teams are the primary human face of our organisation and so these are critical roles.

Let’s look at recruitment first 

Effectively predicting sales performance is critical to the success of any business, and using well designed, rigorous psychometric assessments as part of a sales selection process can really boost our chances of finding and retaining the right salespeople.

We have been using …

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Reminder: Everybody lives by selling something

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Blog, Human-centred, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Selling Better, Success

Everybody lives by selling something

Within a business, this means that everybody needs to be an ambassador for our organisation. There needs to be recognition that everyone is in one of two roles: 1) actively involved in selling, or 2) supporting someone who is. Without sales there’s no business.

Selling is a human domain

Selling isn’t the domain of salespeople, it is a human domain. For those of us who have talents and capabilities we want to take to market we need to harness the competencies of human-centred, ethical selling practices. Without this essential set of life skills, we cannot …

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Using assessments when recruiting salespeople

By / / Assessments, Call Reluctance, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Assessments, Sales performance, Sales Talent

Your sales teams are the primary human face of your organisation and – still – identifying and retaining high performing sales talent continues to elude many businesses. 

A successful salesperson will not only enable your organisation to ride out the economic uncertainty but will also ensure you are ready to seize the opportunities that present during the recovery.

Effectively predicting sales performance is critical to the success of any business, and using well designed, rigorous psychometric assessments as part of a sales selection process can really boost our chances of finding and retaining the …

Using assessments when recruiting salespeople Read Post »

The Holy Trinity of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Buying, Collaboration, Common Ground, Communication, Ethics & Values, Opportunity, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Solution Selling

This post has been inspired by my colleague, Ben Shute, who I work arm in arm with bridging the divide between sales and procurement. He wrote about the Holy Trinity of Procurement Skills and so challenged me to do the same for Sales.

Here is my contribution.

The profession of selling requires a whole range of capabilities. It’s hard to know where to begin to define the 3 core elements for sales – the Holy Trinity of Selling.

So I’ll start with the master categories of Knowledge, Skills and Mindset from Barrett’s Sales Competency Dictionary.

Knowledge

Let’s …

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How should I assess a sales recruit?

By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Talent

Last time I wrote about what we should be looking for in a good sales recruit.

This time we will look at how we go about assessing a sales recruit.

There are a myriad of ways you can assess someone – some are legitimate and purpose built for sales recruitment while other methods wouldn’t stand up in a court of law even if they work for you. 

Let’s take intuition or gut feel for instance.

There is nothing wrong with using your gut feelings or intuition; however, using it as your only source of assessment criteria will make it hard …

How should I assess a sales recruit? Read Post »

What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Role Clarity, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

What should I be looking for in a good sales recruit?

This is a vexing question for many sales and business leaders.

And some of the answers we still hear aren’t very helpful either.

‘They must be hunters.’

‘They need to be hungry.’

‘They’ve got to be able to close deals.’

‘They must have a mortgage and family so they are ‘motivated’ to sell more.’

‘They must have industry experience.’

Notice anything familiar about most of these answers?

They are all stuck in the ‘aggressive, self-serving, desperate approach to selling’ paradigm which is not what good selling actually is …

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The alarming findings about the Peter Principle & Sales Managers

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Coaching, Collaboration, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent

Have you ever worked with someone who was really effective in one role but then promoted to other roles, usually management, and ended having no idea and no real capacity to fulfil that role in a competent manner?

Chances are your answer is ‘yes’.

This is a common occurrence in many organisations where people are continually promoted until they are no longer effective in their roles – basically they rise to their level of incompetence. This is referred to as the Peter Principle which was highlighted by Dr. Laurence J. Peter in 1969.

Basically, the problem arises when the skills that makes someone …

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Cringeworthy: how arrogance and ‘seniority’ destroy sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Sales Meetings, Sales Talent

Here is a senior manager’s account of a real life, cringeworthy example of when a so called ‘experienced’ senior consultant completely stuffs up a prospective client meeting despite the young graduate, a millennial from the vendor’s company, sitting in the meeting with them instinctively knowing better and trying to do the right thing by the client and the company:

“One of the graduates from our team went out with a senior consultant on a prospective client meeting. Throughout the meeting the senior consultant was ignoring the prospective client and just trying to push one of our products. The graduate, …

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Is your sales problem really a sales leadership problem?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Leadership, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Talent

Of course every business wants their sales people to prospect more, close more sales, produce more consistent sales results, achieve their sales targets/budgets, have happy, loyal clients, and so on.

Some of the most common questions we hear from sales managers, sales leaders and CEOs are:

‘How do we get our sales people to sell more, produce better sales results?’

‘How do we find better sales people who can sell?’

If you look at the overwhelming content on the internet about sales problems and issues it focuses mostly on sales people and their performance…. “how to sell more” is the most common search term.

However, …

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