Another week goes by and another dozen stories of businesses discounting prices (or being asked to do so by their prospects or clients) appear. This week we heard about a few examples:
6 Tips on How to Sell Value and Reposition Price – Take 2 Read Post »
On 27 March 2019 we hosted our 7th Sales Trends Business Breakfast celebrating the 10th edition of the Barrett Annual 12 Sales Trends Report with Trust as our central theme.
Over 120 people attended the event, mostly business people but we also had the Year 11 International Baccalaureate Student Representatives of the Melbourne Montessori School attend to further their knowledge and education as they study Business Management.
The attendees heard from our special guest speakers, Suzanne Paynter, Strategy and Policy Advisor for the Future Business Council, and Andrew Smith, Head of Business Customer at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and myself, where we …
2019 Sales Trends Event – Trust me, I’m in Sales Read Post »
This is a very interesting, perplexing and vexing question which is now being discussed at all levels of society.
This question is not only an economic and business question but, increasingly, a moral question challenging the very nature of how we make a living, how we make money and how we function as communities, economies and societies.
At this very point in our existence when anyone can reach almost everyone, everywhere, selling our wares and enticing people to buy, we, in the West at least, are confronted by the spectre of overconsumption, excessive waste with its environmental impacts and the ignominy of …
Is Consumerism past its use-by-date? Read Post »
Sales Trend 2 of the Barrett 12 Sales Trends Report for 2019 touches on a very timely topic in Australia – trust and the financial sector.
By guest author David Robertson, Head of Economic and Market Research, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank.
2018 has not been a good year for the stock prices of Australian financial institutions, with the ‘Financials’ sub-index of the ASX200 down over 16% from its high of 6621 in January. The rest of the market is also lower but not to the same extent –and the broader ASX200 index did reach a fresh ’18 peak recently in August …
Trust, financial institutions and the markets. Read Post »
Whether we are a salesperson or not, there are times in our daily lives when knowing how to sell well turns often awkward situations into positive outcomes for everyone.
We are social animals. We rely on others for our existence which means we need to engage with others in some way to be able to live effectively and have a meaningful existence.
Let’s look at the new school year as an example: there are often many new faces, new people to meet and people to interact with across the year whether you want to or not.
This means that people find …
Sales Tips for everyday life situations Read Post »
Selling is a hot topic, especially the louder calls for more ethical, fairer, purpose driven business and selling practices. Given the recent findings from the Australian Banking Royal Commission and the emerging new world transparency highlighting various unethical, immoral and unsustainable business and sales practices across the collective value chain, the rise of an Ethical Purpose Driven Selling Methodology, as the new world order, is making its way into mainstream consciousness.
This got us revisiting our whitepaper, The History of Sales Methodologies – why some work and others don’t which we published in 2013. We wondered if there were enough significant …
This week marks the 24th anniversary since I founded Barrett and, over the summer break, I had some time to reflect upon myself, my business’ journey and the many, many lessons learned over the last 24 years.
We often get our ‘business lessons’ from big corporates about how to do this or that; however, I have found that many of these corporate lessons do not always translate well into small (few than 20 employees) to medium sized businesses which make up over 90% of all business in Australia.
So given that I fall into that 90+% category and have managed to …
24 years in business and 24 Big Lessons to share Read Post »
Even in the advent of big data, the nature of developing genuine customer relationships is generally not understood well enough by most businesses, and is not often on the agenda for thorough examination.
This got me thinking about political parties and the nature of their relationships with their party members and the broader communities upon which they rely upon to get elected.
In speaking with Leslie Roberts, Principal of ERM Advisory, he states that ‘In advice-based professional practices, such as accounting, financial planning, legal services, etc. it is all too common for the topic of customer relationships to be subject to gut-feeling, …
On 9 January, 1995 I took the road less travelled when I chose to start my business dedicated to Selling Better rather than follow the traditional path of Selling More, and that has made all the difference.
As a business owner, entrepreneur, and pattern systems thinker amongst other things, it has been a fascinating and interesting journey of discovery on many levels: personally, professionally, intellectually, culturally, ethically, philosophically, and systems-wise.
While I am originally a science graduate who specialised in medical and biological subjects, I have adapted and evolved into an architect, engineer, behavioural scientist and philosopher who focuses …
The road less travelled – Selling Better Read Post »
My team and I have been studying sales teams, salespeople, sales operating systems, sales strategies, sales processes, and sales cultures across a wide variety of industries in the public and private sectors, N4P and government since 1995 and we have seen and learned a lot of things.
Here is some of what we have learned:
12 things we’ve learned so far about Selling Better in a 21st Century world Read Post »