Driving away customers Have you ever come across a salesperson making assumptions about you, your needs and expectations, or your experience? Then you are probably aware of how powerful these assumptions can be – at driving you away as a customer. We experienced this recently. While undergoing renovations on our home, we ordered a new bathtub -stand alone, a very plain and symmetrical design – straight from a local manufacturer. […]
The Power of Assumptions Read More »
How many people in your business are in contact with customers on a daily basis? How many of them would be presented with new business opportunities but wouldn’t know what they look like or what to do with them? Lately, we are hearing a common theme coming from CEOs, sales leaders, and partners at professional services firms: “My team cannot spot a business opportunity even when it’s right in front
Four tips to spot business opportunities Read More »
Building trust is key to sustainable long term sales relationships. This is surprisingly true even for very large B2B sales, despite the availability of hard facts on the buying company’s reliability, cash flow, payment morale, etc. Trust is still key to long term relationships that don’t require controlling and compliance functions all the time. Creating and earning trust is, therefore, a skill salespeople have to master, and indeed, a lot
Trust improves the Learning and Development culture Read More »
Here we go again. Global disarray, government elections, political scandals of betrayal and corruption. How do we keep our head when everyone else around us is losing theirs? How are we supposed to lead business and keep selling better when there’s a general feeling of uncertainty that makes decision making so difficult? There are those of us who have been around in business for some time now. Many of us
How to sell better in uncertain times Read More »
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: a business being asked by a prospect to ‘give us a better price because you are doing a few things with us’, a business being told by a client, midway through a project, that ‘they would love to
6 Tips on How to Sell Value and Reposition Price Read More »
It all starts with opportunity. It’s about the choices we make on a daily basis. We are all presented with opportunities every day whether we see them or not. Some people are lucky enough to have opportunities served up to them on the platter of life not having to work very hard for them. And even then, these people may not realise their opportunities and let them sail away. While
Life is all about Opportunity Read More »
Our founder and CEO, Sue Barrett, has written a book. Not a business e-book as her previous ones but a paperback book. This book sits somewhere between business, self-help and memoir underpinned by a bit of science and philosophy as well. It was a labour of love and Sue enjoyed every minute of writing it. We hope you enjoy reading it too. Here’s an excerpt – Chapter 2: What led
142 Days of Gratitude that Changed my Life Forever Read More »
Someone has to do the selling or you don’t have a business. There are lots of people who have great ideas, skills, processes or inventions but hate the thought of selling. These people usually come from two camps: Camp 1: Those people who understand they have to sell in order to have a business but just don’t know how to do it. They often harbour some fears and anxieties about
Someone has to sell, or you don’t have a business Read More »
In order to achieve peak sales fitness, business and sales leaders and their sales teams need to adopt a Systems approach to sales operational excellence. Sales operations are complex variable systems with many moving parts—they do not follow a straight line; smart companies get this. They recognise that oversimplification is their enemy when it comes to developing and deploying effective sales strategies and functioning sales operations and teams. However, in
Check the ‘Sales Fitness’ of your Sales Operation Read More »
A research paper from the US market from early 2019 stated that more and more sales teams are relying on renewals in revenue from their existing accounts which is giving them around 70 per cent of their annual sales revenues. On one hand, this sounds like good news. Sales teams understand the importance of retaining existing business with their clients. But you’ve got to ask yourself though, what does “retaining
Are you becoming a ‘Professional Visitor’? Read More »