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Four Success Characteristics plus two
What was the difference between a marketing failure and a marketing success? It's rarely how smart you are. It's not how good your product or service is. It's usually a combination of skills, behaviours and attitudes.

Different Influencing Styles
If you're a manager, is it important to develop different styles of behaviours and a wider range of approach? And how can this affect your performance as a manager now... and in the future? And does it matter?

Moving to a 'consequential corporate culture'

In any organisation it is the behaviour of its’ people that lead to success, mediocrity or failure. Behaviours stem from a set of values that the organisation must understand and that leadership must role model. Behaviours must also have consequences for the values to have any credibility; an up side for good behaviour in terms of recognition and reward and a downside for poor behaviour in terms of challenge, coaching, training and development and perhaps even having to leave the organisation. In the article we provide 10 areas that you must focus on to embed values and the right behaviours in your business.

Providing Feedback

Providing and receiving feedback, whether it is asked for or not, is a regular feature of interacting with others. We generously provide our opinions to others in the hope that they will change their thoughts or behaviours in some way. That is, in a way that we believe will be of benefit to them or us. But do they really hear what we are saying? Are we presenting our feedback in a way that the other person is open to receiving or at least considering?

What’s channel stuffing and why is it problematic?

How much do you actually sell? How profitable are your sales? How accurately can you forecast your sales results? How many ‘returns’ do you receive? How often do you need to discount? How often are you left with old stock? What are your sales cycles? Are your sales people rewarded on volume only or on margin, account growth, account retention, and customer satisfaction? The answers to these and other key questions will tell you just how effective a sales force is functioning, how they measure their effectiveness, how they think about their business, their customers, their careers, and how likely they are to deliver profitable, sustainable sales results.

Are you making the most of Psychometric Assessments?

Many of us actively recoil when we see the words ‘Psychometric Assessments’. This may be due to fear of the unknown, seeing them as ‘tests’ or just tedious questionnaires. While you would not be alone in this, we on the other hand are advocates (of the right Assessments). At Barrett, we spend much of our time demystifying what Assessments actually are and how businesses can benefit from using them. So even if you have been brave enough to use Assessments, most people do not know how to get the most out of them. Often the Assessment process is seen as an isolated event with the final report being put on the shelf or in a draw out of sight and out of mind.

Selling is not a dirty word

We are not born with our beliefs or values, they are taught to us. Our thoughts, feelings, views and opinions about the world are shaped by our experiences of many people and many things. They are coloured, rightly or wrongly, by our perceptual filters which we learn from others. ‘Watch who you let near your mind’ is a statement that is often quoted in my articles and for good reason. It takes between 6-8 weeks to unwittingly pick up and adopt another’s views, beliefs and perceptions and own them as your own if we do not question and thoroughly examine the consequences and impact of these beliefs and perceptions on our own thoughts, feelings, behaviours and actions.

The Dark Side

How well can we manage ourselves, our teams and businesses in a crisis or tough times? Are our actions and behaviours putting us, our people and our businesses at risk? As leaders and managers we are on show and our actions often speak louder than our words. In challenging times this is even more evident. Under pressure cracks may appear and our leadership is put to the test. How do we cope under pressure? What happens to us when we crack? When placed under high levels of pressure, most people will rely on coping mechanisms or their strengths that help them manage in day to day activities, but due to the pressure they can actually become counterproductive tendencies. We refer to these as “risk factors” and they can emerge as our dark side.

Practice, Practice, Practice then Play

In the sporting world it is expected that athletes make the time to practice, practice, practice and then go and compete or play the game. Through regular practice they hone their skills, behaviours and attitudes to ensure they are ‘match fit’ and ready to compete at the highest standards. A sports team needs to make sure that when they are in the thick of the game they can draw upon those skill drills and practice sessions to perform well as a team and perform well under pressure. When an individual athlete is neck and neck with a competitor racing for the finish line they need to know how to dig deep and draw upon their experiences, skills, and mental and physical reserves to cross the finish line first. This cannot happen without lots of conscious, purposeful practice.

Creating an effective sales performance management system

Following on from last week’s article about managing and measuring the right things in sales, I thought it would be worth looking at some of the key principles for effective sales performance management systems. The first place to start is to align your sales performance management system and subsequent key measures to your organisation’s strategy and goals. It’s then the job of the CEO and the Sales Leader to ensure the organisation (that means everyone else who supports the sales effort) is aligned to the sales performance management system. When this dimension is in place the organisation is best placed to sustain high sales performance.

Establishing Family Boundaries
The word ‘boundary’ is one that we hear often these days, but it was not always that way. In fact the concept of establishing boundaries within families is a relatively new; and certainly one worth taking time to implement.

Addressing Difficult situations at Work
Difficult situations at Work

Don’t take your frustrations out on your customers

Sales and Service roles are not for the faint hearted and can often take their toll on your good nature, your energy and your ability to deal effectively with frustrating issues, especially when you put in the effort to do the ‘right thing' by your customers and it is not appreciated, acknowledged or actioned. At the end of a long day or week dealing with lots of people, pulling together various deals, solving problems and keeping your energy levels up and being on your best behaviour, you could be forgiven for being a bit ‘short' if things don't go according to plan and something falls short of your expectations. To manage our frustrations, sales and service people can resort to all sorts of remedies.

Competing motivations creating confusion

How to incentivise and reward sales people has long been a contentious topic. Too many times I have seen businesses set up incentive programs that reward the wrong behaviours which can affect team morale, client relationships, sales, staff retention, and so on. For instance, I recently met the managing director of a medium sized software business who asked me why would his sales people keep selling one version of their product when they had been instructed to also sell in a newer more comprehensive version of the product.

Human Resources; How much is enough? A Controversial Perspective
If your HR staff is not providing key reports and developing programs and strategies that either reduce your costs or increase revenue in some way, then you don’t need them at all. I mean that. But assuming you have, or will hire, a Human Resources professional that does or will make recommendations that contribute to the bottom line, the answer is “it depends”.

Succession Planning - success through coaching!
Research indicates that effective leaders are instrumental in driving improvements, retaining key talent, attracting new talent, and even in building and sustaining organisational culture...so why do so many organisations fail to maximise on the potential of their leaders given the significant role they play in ensuring business continuity and success?

How to Lead the Masses
A Leader's Guide to the Galaxy - Part 2

The C Factor!

Assembling a 'dream team' sales force is not as difficult as you may first think. I've known of businesses reaching great heights through the salesmanship of only a few sales-guns! Before creating a 'dream team' you need to have at least one exceptional salesperson you can model. Someone has to go there first! Whether this person is the company founder, (if sales savvy,) or a senior leader, there must be a working best-practice sales-process you can model and replicate. Once you have a high performing salesperson to model; their core characteristics, behaviours, and activities, then form the blueprint (DNA) of your 'dream team'. Keeping in-mind, that it's ok to have varying personalities in the same team, this enables your team to demonstrate versatility and engage a diverse customer base. You don't need to 'literally' clone sales

The new leadership challenge: breakthrough leadership
Leadership Psychology conducts research into breakthrough processes in leadership - follower interactions

What is good selling?
Like many people, I have always been curious about what makes "great sales performance". This is a perplexing question that has been asked and attempted to be answered by many people over the years. Also, are great sales people born? (most people believe this to be true - but it's not). What does it take to be an elite sales performer, and can anyone learn how to sell well?

Are you creating competing motivations in your sales force?

I recently met the managing director of a medium-sized software business, who asked me why would his sales people keep selling one version of their product when they had been instructed to also sell in a newer, more comprehensive version of the product. It turned out that his sales people earned more commission by selling in the older version than the newer version of his product. And the sales people made the bulk of their income from their commissions rather than from their salaries. There you have it. What makes perfect sense to the sales person does not always work for the organisation or the customer.

Reading People
Are you able to effectively read people and make proper adjustments in your approach and selling style? Do you understand what this means, have you experienced the difference it can make in your selling results and do you have the skills to do so?

It all comes back to confidence
I define personal authenticity as knowing who you are and having to the courage to be it in all situations without fear or compromise. This is not always easy.

Why Improve Your Communication Skills?
Ask yourself these questions. The answers you generate may surprise you.

The Dance of Mind: The Key to Superior Performance

If you've ever tried to kick a habit or change self-defeating behaviours, you know that there is nothing more challenging that changing human behaviour. But behaviours are the effect of some cause. If we change the cause, what is behind the scenes leading to certain behaviours, the behaviours change naturally. The key to superior performance is behind the scenes in the mind. Learn about how your mind works as a system and how you can change that system to achieve happiness and success.

Everything Changes after a Recession

“If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside, then the end is in sight” Jack Welch, CEO, G. E. In fact, the world is rapidly changing and organizations need to keep up. Innovation has become one of the top business objectives in organizations that want to grow, out perform their competitors and, indeed, survive by creating a high value proposition. More than 70% of senior executives said “innovation will be at least one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies in the next three to five years”.

Why hire a Sales Coach when I already have a Sales Manager?

Most companies already have a sales manager or person in charge of sales in some capacity, so why hire a sales coach? Many sales mangers are not trained in the subtleties of effective sales coaching nor have they developed the necessary skills and tools to be effective sales leaders. The most common way to hire a sales manager is to simply promote your best sales person. This logic suggests this person is the most qualified to lead the sales team based on their past sales achievements. This type of ‘promotion by necessity’ is common, but not commonly successful. In the process you may even lose your top sales performer when their leadership abilities fail to match their sales ability.

What should my sales team expect from a successful Sales Coach?

Successful sales coaching requires patience, a good ear, curiosity and of course the ability to provide individual sales people or sales teams with the right information at the right time. These relationships empower the recipients with knowledge and the confidence to maneuver themselves toward the right outcomes. Wisdom is knowledge applied. Therefore the sales coach prefers not to impart his wisdom directly, instead coaching the sales people or sales team to find their wisdom through their own questioning, answering and experiences.

Nothing Happens until someone Sells something!
What does it really mean to sell something? An idea, a dream, our values, an opinion, or ones self interests? Selling is simply: a transfer of enthusiasm and trust in someone or something. With this trust is born a responsibility and commitment to honor that trust, and do so willingly, no matter how challenging.

MOST OF US REMAIN STRANGERS

Leo Buscaglia has been quoted as saying; "Most of us remain strangers to ourselves, hiding who we are, and ask other strangers, hiding who they are, to love us." Unfortunately, there is an incredible amount of truth in this statement. One thing that my life of experiences has taught me is that the likelihood of finding a deep and meaningful love relationship is directly proportional to the amount of time and effort I have spent in getting to truly know and accept myself.

Six Inner Principles of Success
This article goes deeper than many discussions that focus on the behviour and habits that bring success. It looks at the mindset of success and examines 6 inner or spiritual principles that underpin all success, and are based on what are called the Universal Laws of Life.

Customer Service do you get it
Building relationships is the cornerstone of all sales - how do you get started?

How to Give and Receive Excellent Feedback
Giving and receiving excellent feedback is a key skill for any leader or manager. But it is so often done badly. Get some handy tips to help you become more effective at using feedback to help others to excel at work and play.

Proctor & Gamble and Google swap employees
Temporary trading of employees in attempt to learn how other companies promote themselves

Spirituality in Business
A quiet revolution is currently taking place as CEO’s all over the world incorporate spiritual principles into their business practices.

Building better performance expectations

Ask yourself: on a scale of 1-10, 10 being high, how effective are the staff in the business? Chances are you will offer a number between 6 and 7. If extra effort is put in by the leadership that can be lifted to perhaps 7.5 maybe as high as 8 for short periods, then when the extra effort stops, as it must, performance slides back to where it was that is about 6.5. Our research states that 65% is about as good as you will get with the current set of performance and HR tools; to achieve consistently better staff performance, without extraordinary leadership efforts requires much better thinking about how staff are supported to be successful and perform as well as they are able.

What makes OPD unique and different?

Good question. Answer: It is a better model of the link between staff behaviours (human performance) and business strategy and goals. It is the best possible model in fact, it is the only way staff behavior can be linked directly to strategy. So what? If your thinking is clearer, do you act more effectively? Of course you do. OPD has answered the question: How is staff behaviours linked directly to business strategy and goals? Having answered the question, the OPD-SHRM system then provides the consulting support and web based administration systems that enable every team leader to apply the model to their team.

…but what do I do?
All this theory is fine, but what does a team leader actually do to develop improved human performance?

An Audience with Charisma

Throughout my career I have often found myself in the company of individuals who have that indefinable quality that draws you to them, and leaves you feeling wonderfully energised as a result of meeting them. As a teenager I studied theatre and the performing arts. I remember the day that I realised technical excellence alone did not guarantee a brilliant performance. Being a huge fan of Ballet I fully appreciated the precision and mastery of The Royal Ballet Company. Yet when I saw The Bolshoi Ballet Company perform Swan Lake the artistes would glide onto the stage yielding an invisible power that captivated, and mesmerised their audience whom they were able to move to tears.

4 Vital Negotiating Behaviours
A skilled negotiator will create high levels of rapport and be sensitive and empathetic to the people they are negotiating with, yet can still be hard on the issues. The ability to separate the people from the issues and recognise that negotiations, are often fraught with emotional intensity can help sharpen the focus on the interests of the other party to better balance perceptions.

The Karma of Connections

The ability to build rapport with customers and prospects is vitally important. Why? Because, if you have rapport with your customers, they are more likely to trust you, listen to you and communicate openly with you. This in turn enables you to interact more comfortably and work more effectively together. Rapport dramatically increases your chances of winning a sale. Additionally, Having rapport means that when there are tough issues to discuss, for example price increases, you can more easily find agreement and solutions and move on.

Change Leadership Management
Many small businesses experience change. Change leadership is the art of helping your team through the change management cycle. Each person shows different emotions and behaviour during change. It’s perfectly normal to experience a real mix of emotions. Not everyone feels all of these feelings intensely and people don’t go through them by numbers.

High Performance Sales Leadership
In sales, whether to lead or not to lead that is the question (all apologies to Shakespeare here). Or to put it another way, whether to lead or to manage in order to drive the required business results. There is no simple right answer to this apparently simple question.

Sales Incentive Plans Drive Sales Behaviours
The behaviours of successful salespeople are considerably influenced by their incentive plans. This is reality and any salesperson claiming that they are not materially motivated is suspect. A salesperson with no desire for additional material gain is extremely unlikely to perform for your business.

The Purpose of Work
Many people ask how to discover their life purpose, believing that when they find that, they will be able to find their ideal work. This is certainly the case, but no experience is wasted in life. While you are working on discovering your life purpose, what about learning the purpose of the work you are doing?

Questions Every CEO Should Be Asking His Sales Managers
High impact sales questions for CEOs

Uncovering Opportunity
In a tough economy, it is more vital than ever that a professional firm gets a good return on its investment in growth. Like the people, the pipeline represents the future.

Are You Working Yourself to Death

A few years ago one of my clients felt a tingling in his finger. Being a workaholic he didn't have time to pay too much attention to it. After all he had meetings booked all day and they were more important than a tingle in his finger. He was about to leave home, then collapsed. Luckily for him, there was another person in the house and they called the ambulance. John had suffered a stroke. The warning signs were there all along. He smoked, was 30kg overweight, his diet was poor and exercise was spasmodic. He worked long hours and was under enormous pressure. Much of the pressure was due to John's organisational skills.

Reframing - Objections
A frame provides a context or focus for your thoughts and actions. Changing the frame of an experience can have a major influence on how you perceive, interpret and react to that experience. Reframing is going on all around us

Now Behave Yourself
One of the keys to facilitating any meeting is managing behaviour: your own behaviour, as well as that of the meeting’s participants.

HELP I hired an Idealist
Using the ideals of your more youthful staff can be a great strategy for creating buy-in and ownership at the staff level

Creating a Culture of High Performance

Heroes in sport may be compared to leaders in organizations. How the members behave and perform is often a result of the example set by leadership. For instance, if a company’s set of published standards are that it values responsibility and accountability, but management often does not abide by these stated principles, employees will, as a consequence, feel it is alright to do the same, thus fostering a culture of deception contrary to the stated value. What kind of culture exists in your organization? Does it contribute to the personal goals that you, as a leader, have or envision for yourself and your company? Do changes need to happen in your culture, values, beliefs and norms in order to stay competitive and achieve high performance in today’s radically changing business environment?

Pose and Smile – You Are On The Apprentice
Be warned – this posting reveals who has been ‘fired’ from the forth episode and the rest of the post is only my observation and opinion based upon 60 minutes of edited TV, nothing more.

How to Leverage the Potential of Foreign Employees for the Success of a Business

We live in a world of migration and the number of migrants crossing the borders increases daily. For a business, hiring foreign nationals can be a great asset, as they bring their unique skills, expertise, knowledge, ethics and culture. And even more, they can help a business in the global market; in fact, as the world becomes smaller and smaller a business will inevitably find itself dealing with foreign customers, clients or suppliers, whether here or abroad, and foreign employees can help it deal successfully with foreign cultures. Furthermore, foreign employees can be a source of personal and professional growth, and such growth will automatically bring about financial growth. But it is very important to understand that ...

How NLP and Metaphysics Can Improve the Emotional Wellbeing of Employees

I am sure you would agree that the most important resource of a business is not really the product or service, nor in the customers; it is actually in the employees, without whom the business would not exist. And if the employees are not well then the performance decreases, and with it the productivity. Now, is there something we can do when we do not feel good that is really effective and lasting? Yes, there is.

Managers Only Gain 4 Per Cent Pay Rise
According to Incomes Data Services, Managers have averaged pay rises of 4% in recent months. A study covering 26,000 managers showed that pay rises had only kept pace with the rate of UK inflation. So 4% is the average. That means some managers get more and some get less. How can you ensure you get more, much, much more?

What's Missing from Leadership Development Programmes?

There is one area that has not been covered in leadership development programmes very well. It’s what Otto Scharmer calls the Blind Spot of Leadership, and he’s referring to what goes on inside the leader. Most leadership development programmes only address what goes on outside leaders – that is their behaviours and the knowledge and skills that is it thought guide the leaders actions. This article will outline a 'map' of the interior landscape of the leader and the actions that result when this is well developed.

Exploring the Sharing of Three Words
“I am sorry.” There are so many lessons to be learned about how to say these simple and very powerful words.

Now You Can Have Super Motivated Staff with these 8 Proven Tips
"Great job - well done..." or "You need to improve..."Which one would you rather feedback on?Giving honest feedback is one of the hardest skills to master...

Who Else Wants To Be An Effective Manager - Here Are 5 Ways To Improve Your Effectiveness
Think of a manager you admire. They are effective, right? Are you as effective as you could be? As a manager, would you like to improve you effectiveness? One way to do that is to inform your staff what they can expect from you.

Anger Solutions™ at Work: Dealing with Difficult People

Let’s face it – if you’re not somebody’s difficult person today, you will be tomorrow. We all take turns being difficult for other people, just as they can be difficult for us. The difficulty comes from differences in personality, communication styles, personal preferences, and our expectations of how things “should” be. In this column, I offer some practical and simple techniques to de-escalate and win over the difficult people in your life.

Scrooged A Dickens of a Way to Manage Change
Managing change in our lives and in our businesses is vital in the modern environments in which we live. There is much to learn from that old and cantankerous Dickens character, Mr Ebenezer Scrooge himself...

Build a Dynamic Business - 10 Steps to Start You Off
What does it take to make businesses perform extremely well? It's when your people work together in incredible ways, to create far more than you might expect...

Solve Problems Permanently Ask WHY

Someone once said that the real issue behind a problem, is one or more levels below the problem. So, solving problems by fire-fighting when they arise, is firstly, not going to actually solve the problem for good. And secondly, it's tiring, wearing, distracting and worse, it causes a really demotivating environment. Definitely not good - not good at all. So the best thing is to find out what's really going on, and to do this, you need to go deep. Here's how...

Employee Success 7 Ways Feedback Works
Feedback to your people works if you get it right. They develop; your business grows and everyone's a winner. Now, here's the good news! In this article are 7 reasons to build 'Feedback' into your skillset.

Ten Ways To Be Better At Dealing With Difficult People
Dealing with difficult people is critical if you are to manage the rest of your team and business to the max. Yet sometimes, just one person can demand your attention, in one way or another, in a way more disproportionate amount than everyone else put together. And if you have two of them, well...

Team Development - Easier to Start from Nothing
Is it easier to have a bunch of people that are brand new to a team, or one that you mould from those you inherit?

Complementing Your Management Team
We all have weaknesses. Whatever our roles. In management positions, one of the bigger challenges is to recognise our own shortcomings and alter our own behaviours. Sometimes this can be very challenging...

Make Meetings Work - Use An Agenda!
For meetings to consistently deliver the required performance and hence outputs, it is critical to have a prepared communication process in advance of the meeting.

Great Stories Change Cultures

It’s always fascinating talking to clients and listening to engrossing, sometimes astonishing, stories about their organisations and their Brands – what surprises me is how few of the really good ones are used as company assets to strengthen their cultures and inspire their workplaces to positive change. Many change initiatives fail is because they rely too much on the classic ‘data gathering, analysis, report writing, and presentations’ instead of more creative approaches that use great stories to grab feelings and to motivate real performance improvement.

Believe you can or believe you can’t you will be right!
Please don’t read this tip if you don’t want your thinking challenged! It can be easy to think that what stands in the way of what we really want is an outside influence(s), however I want to suggest that more often it is our own thinking that really stands in our way, in particular our beliefs,

Business Management: How Clear Is Your Vision?

Vision, mission and values are supposed to be the beacon by which organizations set their strategic direction but how often do they align with everyday priority setting? Does your team share the same definitions for your organization’s vision? If you operate at a departmental level, does your departmental team share your department’s vision? If the answer is, no, then it’s not going to be easy to achieve the results you expect. Here are some helpful suggestions.

The Benefits of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a skill in which you examine what you are feeling and why you feel a particular way in a given situation. Developing a high level of EI is a skill that would benefit adults in any occupational field. The ability to closely examine your emotions and thoughts before making decisions or responding verbally leads to more successful work and home environments and to healthier people.

Building Trust in Your Business Relationships - 10 Steps
Trust is formative in how you do your business. Your people will reflect your behaviours with them and at the end of the day, your customers and clients will be on the receiving end of the values of your business or organisation. But, where to start. Here are some ideas...

Productive Conflict in Leadership Teams
Productive conflict in leadership teams is essential if they want to be high performing. This has to come from a basis of trust, understanding and honesty. The Leader needs to role model the right behaviours for this to happen.

What drives business failures or successes
How business lifecycles and leadership behaviours contribute to business successes and failures

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