Sales Trend 9 – Procurement need to be solutions salespeople too

By / / Procurement, Sales Trends

The ninth Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘Procurement need to be solutions salespeople too’. The times are indeed changing with the function of Procurement becoming increasingly important as a conduit, an orchestrator if you will, of the co-creation of value with suppliers and internal stakeholders as well as right down the value chain to the end consumer and back again. No longer can procurement rest its case on ‘lowest cost’, ‘cheapest price’ or ‘supply of goods and services’; it must assume responsibility for the creation and delivery of real value beyond a price …

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Sales Trend 7 – The Normalising of Social Media in Sales

By / / Sales Trends, Social Media, Social Sales

The seventh Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘The Normalising of Social Media in Sales’.

This sales trend is seeing businesses really ramping up their use of social media and in very sophisticated ways. Rather than seeing social media as a tack on to the marketing budget, smart businesses are now creating their own social media departments which are actively working in concert with sales, marketing, and other departments to create real-time content that is engaging, relevant and interactive.

Prospects and customers have never been closer to our businesses – they are just a click away. They can scrutinise us as much …

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Sales Trend 6 – Low Carbon Economy Sales Opportunities

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Trends, Sustainability & Environment

The sixth Sales Trend for 2014 is ‘Low Carbon Economy Sales Opportunities’.

Despite many governments lagging behind in terms of creating and endorsing low carbon policies and industries, forward thinking organisations are taking the lead on creating low / no carbon businesses and partnering with each other. And it’s not just big business, there is a growing number of SMEs (small to medium enterprises) driving change too.

Rather than only focusing on the cost of creating a low carbon economy, this sales trend is seeing smart companies and communities looking and acting on at the abundance of opportunity within new 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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Sales Trend 4 – Sales Training Methodologies are changing

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Essentials, Sales Training, Sales Trends

The fourth Sales Trend for 2014 is Sales Training Methodologies are going to change.

Sales training as we know it is not going to disappear. As the market becomes more complex and competition more virulent salespeople will need more, not less training. But they will also have less time to be trained. These two forces – increased competition with the need to up skill salespeople and less time for training – will make identifying different and effective training methods key to success.

Amongst the more evident challenges facing companies …

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Sales Trend 3: Sales Excellence Managers to find their true role

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Training, Sales Trends

The third Sales Trend for 2014 is Sales Excellence Managers will find their real role. Historically, organisations employed sales training managers with the mandate of sourcing the best sales training and development materials, or alternatively developing sales training programmes for their organisations. However, the plethora of sales training and the confusion of training methods all being touted as ‘best practice’, coupled with the lack of training for sales managers led many sales training managers to expand their role, taking over much more than sales training and expanding it into part of the traditional …

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How to give your sales force a competitive advantage

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

Which sales trends will most affect your business?

How can you make the most of these changes?

How can you steer your sales strategy to deliver sustainable results?

How can you give your sales force a competitive advantage?

These questions were posed at the inaugural 12 Sales Trends Annual Business Breakfast hosted by Barrett.  Focusing on what to do in light of the 12 Sales Trends for 2014 – The Thinking Sales Organisation  we presented a very enlightening and informative speech on what we can do and how we can navigate our way using the 12 …

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Why we need Sales Superheroes

By / / Business Acumen, Sales Trends, Uncategorized

Why do we need Sales Superheroes?

This question and its answer became evident at the inaugural 12 Sales Trends Annual Business Breakfast hosted by Barrett.  Focusing on what to do in light of the 12 Sales Trends for 2014 – The Thinking Sales Organisation, business and sales leaders from a wide range of industries gathered to listen to our guest speaker James Thomson, Companies & Markets editor of The Australian Financial Review  and the Barrett team discuss how we can navigate our way in 2014 and beyond and …

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2014 Sales Trend 2 – Telesales will have to make dramatic changes

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Customer Service, Sales Trends

The second Sales Trend for 2014  is ‘Telesales will have to make dramatic changes’. In-bound and out-bound telesales and call centre operations have traditionally focused on the uncomplicated sale of easy-to-understand commodities and the service support of relatively simple customer issues. Now, with the increasing demands of more sophisticated buyers they are going to have to make some dramatic changes. And with more people buying over the Internet, as opposed to telephone shopping, the number of people involved in those ineffective call centres is likely to drop. At the same …

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Sales Trend 1: Sales Management will look to drive costs out of sales

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Management, 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.  For instance, when reviewing the 12 Sales Trends for 2013 you can see hard evidence of these trends in mainstream practice. So let’s see what is in store for us in 2014. Here is the first Sales Trend for 2014 – Sales Management will look to drive costs out of …

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