The power of Sales Process Maps to deliver best sales practice

By / / Coaching, Education in Sales, Sales Benchmarking, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Process Maps, Sales Talent

Most new salespeople are thrown in the deep end when it comes to sales induction.

“Here go out with Josephine, our best sales person and be like her.”

Most salespeople, in general, are given no articulated sales process which means there’s nothing specific to be coached or trained to or to follow.

In sales teams we often have the blind leading the blind when it comes to achieving sales best practice.

Why? Because most businesses do not have an articulated sales process map(s) for their salespeople to follow. They treat selling as an action not as a profession with clearly defined …

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Sales Trend 2 – The Silent Majority

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Talent, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 2 from our 12 Sales Trends for 2017 report is about the new salesperson stereotype.

The history of sales methodologies and sales people is full of twists and turns. With a few excellent –or at least well-intentioned– ways of selling and many others that are the complete opposite.

There was a time when the salesperson was the only one with information about new products—from the end of the 19th century to mid-20th century; they were the experts and customers were in their hands when it came to make a buying decision. This produced a situation where many sales …

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How to give every salesperson the best start to their sales career

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Results, Sales Strategy, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Strategy

This is how most salespeople are inducted into their sales careers:

“Welcome to our team, Rebecca. It’s great to have you on board. Here is your list of ABC accounts and the products brochure which outlines all the products we sell. I also want you to meet our best salesperson, Ben. He is awesome. As part of your induction I want you to go out on the road and learn to be just like Ben.”

That’s it, give or take a few iterations.

Rebecca is thrown in the deep end and at best asked to mimic Ben with no real context, no reference …

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Lessons from Introverts on how to be better salespeople

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Neuroscience, Sales Culture, Sales Talent

Last week I wrote about the value that engineers, technicians, scientists and mathematicians can bring to the world of selling into the 21st century. I mentioned their qualities of analytical thinking, problem solving, their deep knowledge base, among other things. I also referred briefly to the traits of introverts, ambiverts and extroverts.

As mentioned it has been a long held belief that extroverts made the best salespeople; the gift of the gab, being charming and persuasive, telling a good story, people oriented and friendly, and all that.

However, the qualities of introversion and ambiversion are proving, in some or …

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Why engineers, technicians & scientists might make the best salespeople in the 21st Century

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Innovation, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Pioneer, Sales Talent

It has been a long held belief that extroverts made the best salespeople; the gift of the gab, being charming and persuasive, telling a good story, people oriented and friendly, and all that. However, given the complexity of our world and the ever increasing need to make well informed decisions and manage risk before we buy, our warm, chatty, convivial friends may need to learn a lesson or two from the more ambiverted/ introverted types many of whom are deep thinking techies, geeks and nerds. More about the value of introversion in next week’s piece.

Let’s look at the merit of …

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Does your sales force match what you are selling?

By / / Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

One size does not fit all when it comes to building the right type of sales force for what you are selling; yet many professionals treat selling as a homogeneous skill set, expecting salespeople to be able to sell anything.

Or another fatal mistake is to assume that industry experience and knowledge alone is all that is required. For too many years sales managers have had industry experience as their number one selection criteria for salespeople. The problem with this is that they usually get the same old people with the same old ideas and the same old results.

The fact is …

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Lessons for Sales from ‘Good to Great’

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Sales Results, Sales Talent, Self Development, Success

Jim Collins (author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t”) stimulates a thought that many sales managers should be asking themselves right now: “What makes good salespeople great?”

At Barrett we work with sales managers and salespeople every day, and recently asked that question of a number of people in both categories. The response wasn’t that startling. What Barrett learned is that few sales managers, and even fewer salespeople, could actually define what “great” selling actually means. This has confirmed Barrett’s findings that many salespeople let themselves down because they …

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Cracking the Sales Myth of Hunters & Farmers

By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent

Many so called “experts” claim that there are two types of salespeople – Hunters and Farmers.

Salespeople, so these experts claim, are either one or the other. Consequently they fit one sales position or another. In our experience, having spent decades working with salespeople at every level in a wide variety of segments, salespeople don’t fit into these neat stereotypes.

The myth about Hunters and Farmers in Selling has been overtaken by a business reality.

Before we crack the myth let’s take a look at where the concept came from in the first place.

The person credited with starting the concept …

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Survival of the Adaptive P2: Develop a well-informed sales force

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Leadership, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

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 2 is all about developing a well-informed sales force

A decade ago, when traditional product-pushing sales were all that mattered, most sales leaders employed and trained well motivated salespeople – usually with what they referred to as “industry experience”. Today that is hardly enough!

Many of these sales leaders now confess to being less certain that industry experience or having …

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Enthusiasm in Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Life Skills, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

There is a popular fallacy that salespeople are born, not made. Whilst there is some vestige of truth in the statement, it is not for the reasons made so popular – i.e. it’s not that salespeople have the ‘gift of the gab’ but rather because these successful salespeople are genuinely enthusiastic about what they do and helping prospects find a solution.  These salespeople have a purpose to what they do and enjoy the process of discovery, problem solving and collaboration with others.

This does not mean that …

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