Sales Trend 10 – The evolution in sales incentive plans

By / / Sales Results, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 10 from our  12 Sales Trends for 2016 is ‘The evolution in sales incentive plans’.

With the growing complexity in many markets and the rise of selling in complex solutions this sales trend tells of the shift towards more customised variable Sales Incentive Programs (SIPs) taking into account team selling, complex solutions, longer sales cycles, and so on.  Whereas ‘Lone Ranger’ commission schemes, which have an extrinsic appeal because they are simple, are primarily on the way out as they are only suitable in very limited circumstances these days.

Sales incentive programs (SIPs) constitute a major cost …

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Sales Trend 9 – Marketing technology for better sales results

By / / Brand & Reputation, Collaboration, CRM, Marketing, Sales Forecasting, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Pipeline, Sales Results, Sales Trends

Guest co-author: David Hubbard CEO, Founder and Revenue Growth Expert for Marketing Outfield, New York, USA

Sales Trend 9 from our  12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is about using Marketing technology for better sales results.

Sales and Marketing Technology – Which Trends Should You Pay Attention To?

No wonder we are confused. The number of vendors providing Advertising, Marketing OR Sales technology “solutions” has exploded in the last couple of years with it becoming a large multi-billion dollar industry with revenues growing at double digit percentages annually. There are now over 3000 vendors (and more in …

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2016 Sales Trend 8, Streamlining CRM

By / / CRM, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 8 from our  12 Sales Trends Report for 2016 is ‘Streamlining CRM’.

By guest author Aminah Georgiou.

Many companies have invested in feature rich sales technologies only to find the functionalities are not being fully utilised or used at all by their sales teams. In many instances, these technologies are either overly complicated requiring excessive administration by sales teams or missing the mark completely on the actual requirements of salespeople and customer facing employees to perform their tasks adequately.

The smart CRM systems are moving with the times making their user interfaces more intuitive, easy to use, and …

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Sales Trend 7 – Buyer Behaviours in Transition

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Procurement, Sales Research, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 7 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 Report is ‘Buyer Behaviours in Transition’.

For some time now we have seen many suppliers falling victim to the ‘race to the bottom’ mentality and tactics driven by various businesses and their procurement teams, especially from the oligopolies that exist here in Australia and the large international corporates.

As highlighted in 2015, our Sales Trend 1 was  ‘Race to the Bottom’ which showed the culmination of the disastrous effects of such short term thinking and tactics on business success, innovation and profitability.  While this …

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Sales Trend 6 – The Sales Curator™

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Sales Skills, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 6 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 Report is ‘The Sales Curator™’.

A new sales capability is required in this information overloaded world. No longer are salespeople seen as the purveyors of information they once were in the 20th century, 21st century salespeople now need to be experts at sifting and sorting information for their clients and prospects.

They need to have in-depth knowledge about what they are selling, how it fits into a system, how it affects their clients and what is and isn’t relevant to each client situation. Like an expert museum …

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Sales Trend 5 – The Way We Sell Around Here

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Culture, Sales Strategy, Sales Training, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 5 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 Report is ‘The way we sell around here’.

The Sales Dream – A low cost, high performing sales force that delivers more sales at better margins to increasingly loyal customers. Sounds like some utopian vision. Not necessarily.

This sales trend highlights the best practices being adopted by smart companies who are focused on embedding ‘How We Sell Around Here’ as their minimum standard of sales excellence and how they are reaping the rewards of their continuous learning programmes and sound sales strategies. They know that if any business …

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Insights from the 2016 Sales Trends Business Breakfast

By / / Sales Leadership, Sales Trends

This week saw Barrett host our third Annual Sales Trends Business Breakfast at The Point, Albert Park in Melbourne.  With the venue overlooking the beautiful Albert Park Lake amidst rowers rowing and the sun rising, 90 senior business and sales leaders joined us to explore this year’s Sales Trends theme of ‘Less is More’ and hear from our special guest speakers James Thomson, Companies and Markets Editor of The Australian Financial Review and Grant Blackley, CEO of Southern Cross Austereo.

Following my overview of the 12 Sales Trends for 2016, James Thomson gave …

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Sales Trend 4 – Sales & Marketing Unite

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Collaboration, Marketing, Sales Strategy, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 4 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is Sales & Marketing Unite.

For too many years there have been various degrees of finger-pointing and strained relations between the Sales and Marketing departments, and in too many cases open hostility. The ‘us and them’ approach has kept these two important disciplines at arms’ length from each other. This undoubtedly diminishes the power and potential of their united efforts. Management has long called for sales and marketing to bury the hatchet, but the requests often lack urgency and are generally met with indifference.

With shrinking markets, micro segments, more informed buyers …

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Sales Trend 3 – Selling is everybody’s business

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 3 of Barrett’s 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is Selling is everybody’s business.

For a long time businesses have been focusing on how to achieve better sales results. Organisations with varying levels of maturity and insight have embarked on many different journeys to get there. Some have been very savvy and have taken a holistic systems approach putting in place sound sales strategies, market segmentation plans underpinned by clear sales processes, standards and values that inform their sales teams. Some organisations tried other alternatives, with varied levels of success, from good training systems to silver bullet solutions that …

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12 Sales Trends for 2016: Sales Trend 2 – Beware Competitor Zero

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Competition, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 2 of Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 is “Beware Competitor Zero”.

Competition comes in all shapes and sizes today; direct, indirect, and disruptive; however, there is another competitor in our midst – indecision or no decision.

This sales trend is about Competitor Zero – indecision leading to procrastination and no decision.

Here and around the world we are seeing buying decisions taking a lot longer than they used to. In medium to large businesses there are also more people involved in making the buying decision, about 5.4 on average, so we are seeing decision by committee which …

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