Sales Trend 11 – Sales cycle taking longer (much longer)

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Procurement, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 11 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 explores the sales cycle and looks at the factors that are making it longer.

In a B2B environment, the sales cycle is usually defined as the days/ weeks/ months that pass from the first time a salesperson makes contact with a lead to the moment the client signs the contract. However, most definitions of ‘sales cycle’ have flaws because it’s nearly impossible to have one definition applicable to every business. Sales cycles vary enormously from industry to industry and organisation to organisation.

Regardless of what your definition of a …

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Sales Leadership – the power of preparedness, curiosity and courage in times of flux

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Leadership, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 7 from the Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about leadership, in particular, which characteristics are key for leaders in times of flux.

The state of flux we are experiencing, is bringing about a shift in the top key qualities required to be an effective business executive and leader.

It’s not necessarily a completely different set of qualities, but a change in their order of relevance for navigating a changing, ‘fluxy’ kind of world.

Douglas A. Ready, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the founder and president of ICEDR, says “We need to …

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How Sales and Marketing can excel in a world in flux

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Marketing, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Results, Sales Trends

In this sales trend from the Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018, David Hubbard explains what sales and marketing can do working together to excel at generating revenue.

Who’s in flux? The Buyer. They have dramatically changed how they identify, evaluate and purchase solutions over the past 10 years, and they continue to evolve. Every member of the buyer team for B2B and considered B2C purchases has instant mobile access to the information they need throughout each stage of their purchasing process.  Even when they are fully engaged with us, they are constantly interacting with our competitor’s information.

As a …

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Sales Trend 4: Buyer Behaviours, AI & the Future of Sales Roles

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Customer Service, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 4 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about buyer behaviours and the future of sales roles.

According to Gartner Research, by 2020 85% of interactions between businesses will be executed without human interaction. [i]

Automation has already diminished the number of people required for blue collar manufacturing roles; however, with the advent of AI (artificial intelligence), big data and algorithms, we are beginning to see sweeping changes happening across the once untouchable white collar sector, including the very people-oriented roles of sales, as many buyers shift part or all of their buying journey …

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Sales Trend 3: Human Centred Selling – designing Empathetic Customer Centric Cultures

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Collaboration, Communication, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Sales Culture, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 3 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2018 is about Human Centred Selling.

Bestselling author and business icon Stephen Covey once said: “When you show deep empathy toward others … That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems”.

In this hyper connected world it’s easy to gain access to information and make simple online purchases that are transactional in nature; items that we know how to use ourselves. However, today there is so much information and so many choices available that many customers are finding making buying decisions overwhelming, especially when things move beyond the …

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Sales Trend 1 – The Selling Better Manifesto

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Education in Sales, Environment & Sustainability, Ethics & Values, Innovation, Mindful selling, Opportunity, Sales Pioneer, Sales Trends, Success, Uncategorized, Wellbeing

Sales Trend 1 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2018 Report is our Selling Better Manifesto. It talks about the Selling Better Movement and it explains why we have started it.

We have created The Selling Better Movement with the hope it will help people understand that there’s a better way of doing business.

A way in which we can all be prosperous.

The Selling Better Movement is an ethical and human-centred selling ethos underpinned by a practical selling philosophy.

The modern business landscape offers a world of possibility. More and more people are stepping out to unearth …

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12 Sales Trends for 2018 – Welcome to the State of Flux

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Sales Trends

The world, more specifically the human world, is changing and moving at lightning speed, adapting and evolving, and getting more complex by the day, to the point where it is becoming too overwhelming for many. Just when we need to be able to really think about and manage complexity, there is a flight to the simplistic to just cope with the day to day. Simple solutions, easy fixes are called for on a daily basis. Many people want a short list of bullet points to give them the answer to make a complex decision. However, simplistic answers to complex problems …

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Sales Trend 11 – Sales to Add Value to Procurement, Not Just Follow the Process

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Procurement, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 11 from Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2017 Report is about Procurement. Guest author Ben Shute, CEO of Comprara, shares his insights.

It was 1999 when De Vincentis and Rackham (of SPIN Selling fame) wrote ‘Rethinking the Sales Force’, a book describing how the rise and rise of procurement challenged sales professionals about how best to organise business-to-business sales teams. Fast forward to 2016 and there are 15,000 people working full time in procurement in Australia, and the proportion of sales revenue that is won through competitive processes is rising year on year. …

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Sales Trend 10 for 2017 – Personal Branding – The Foundation of Social Selling

By / / 12 Sales Trends Pages Category, Brand & Reputation, Sales Trends, Social Sales

Sales Trend 10 from Barrett’s 12 Sales trends Report for 2017 is about the relation between personal branding and social selling.

It is an interesting fact that the ‘extraordinary’ of yesterday becomes the ‘ordinary’ of today.

Have you noticed that the most extraordinary salespeople of 5 years ago are often the ordinary salespeople today—or gone. Why is this?

The world of sales has changed dramatically in the last 5 years and some selling organisations and their salespeople are not adapting fast enough. As a result, a lower percentage of salespeople are achieving their targets and vendors are struggling to grow …

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Sales Trend 9 – Learning Agility

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Management, Sales Process Maps, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Sales Trends

Sales trend 9 from our 12 Sales Trends Report for 2017 explores how salespeople can navigate the difficult situation of being in a complex sales environment and the need to simplify things for their clients.

Salespeople traditionally find themselves in conflicting spaces. A classic situation is the challenge to bring the diverging interests of clients (e.g. lower prices, discounts) and the organisations these salespeople are representing (higher prices, better margins) together. In that capacity, they have to be skilled as mediators, translators, and problem solvers.

Currently, a very different polarity is demanding attention from salespeople as well as sales managers …

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