I read the book the Perfect Sales Force by Derek Gatehouse. It is a great book and well worth the read. While I agree with most of the text the area that does concern me is his point that Sales Process is essentially a waste of time as it hampers top performing sales people as it moves them away from their own successful style. My issue with this is that if that is the case then the Sales Process is too inflexible and the sales management is being run on activity not results. An entrepreneur and sales director said to me “I enjoy the sales process we implemented. It gave me a structure to follow yet allowed me to sell the way I sell and did not cramp my style”. That is what a true sales process should do. It should not stifle your super stars.

The other major issue I have with Derek’s view is that one of the biggest beneficieries of a Sales Process are those not involved in sales. I have found whenevr I train engineers, marketing, operations in a sales process they absolutely become more understanding of the sales team and we get a sales culture building. Suggesting Sales Process is over rated does nothing but further the divide that exists in too many companies between the sales team and the rest of the organisation.

We are holding our next Business Breakfast in Melbourne following the success of our Social Media Breakfast in March. This one is Sales Performance best practice and will feature the highlights from the Miller Heiman Global Sales Practices Study for 2009. Most importantly for the first time ever it will include key differences between Australian organisations and global best practices.This breakfast will feature Michael Light the Asia Pacific VP for Miller Heiman, myself and Brett Bonser.

The breakfast is FREE and will be held from 7.30am - 9.00am at Karstens at CQ 123 Queen Street Melbourne on Tuesday June 16th. The last one we did sold out in Melbourne and Sydney so please rsvp asap to ausinfo@millerheiman.com or call 02 9909 8699 or 03 9560 1188

Fencing master Jon Fethers presenting the silver to Ben Hartnett

Mastery is a mix of art and science and is a worthy pursuit. On the weekend I caught up with my fencing master Jon Fethers after a gap of 30 years. My eldest son was competing in his first fencing event, The Jon Fethers Golden Foil. Jon is a legend in the sport and truly epitomises what it is to be a master. Humble, confident, professional and still with an enquiring mind as to how to be better. Jon was 5 x British Champion, Silver Medallist at the Commonwealth Games, Won Australian Championships all three disciplines and was a champion on the European circuit as well. They say that on average it takes ten years to be world class at anything. Sure you can do it less but on average its ten years so don’t beat yourself up too much. Selling is no different. Sales Mastery is something that must be continually worked at like any profession. My son ended up second overall in his division. As he was presented his medal from Jon Fethers Jon whispered into Ben’s ear “next time it will be number one”. Words of encouragement from a true master of his sport.

A lot of my focus is on business building and business improvement through sales performance. However business rebuilding is quite a different aspect. Especially rebuilding after a business or personal tragedy. Watch Kochies Business Builders on Channel 7 at 11.00am this morning April 19th to see how we advised a variety of business owners are tackling rebuilding their business after the tragic Victorian bushfires. Many of these businesses are reflective of business everywhere. Many are underinsured, technology is not backed up, accounts are not held offsite and they simply could not survive a major distrupive event. See how people such as the team from Crumbs Gourmet (pic above) are taking the challenge.

Currently in the Healesville, Marysville area filming Kochies Business Builders Bushfire TV Special. There is a lot of businesses up here hurting because people have stopped coming. Day trippers. weekenders get up here now. There are awesome places to see and stay. Get up here and have a beer at the Black Spur Inn http://www.blackspurinn.com.au. Sit out on the balcony and watch the motorcycles go past on what is rated as one of the Top 10 rides in Australia and say hi to Scott for me. Stay at Gary and Vicki’s award winning Woodlands Retreat  http://www.woodlandscottages.com.au . Great fun at Mitch’s Trout farm. You can catch fish in under a minute http://www.buxtontrout.com.au . This area has some great businesses but they need you patronage. More next blog.

Social Media Secrets for Business Owners Breakfast

Today we ran our Social Media Secrets for Business Owners and had a great turn out from Melbourne based business owners and executives who were all using to some degree social media applications all bright and early for a 7.30am breakfast. A point I like to make at these events is that there are answers to your questions in the room and this event was no different. In Q&A we had some great contributions around the room to various questions and comments posed by the audience members. My co presenter Jasmine Batra from Arrow Internet http://www.arrowinternet.com.au and I showed why Social Media is important for business owners and how it is part of a growing trend of people wanting to connect to like minded people and the overall theme of targeted marketing and Web 2.0 applications of interacting with your customers as opposed to mainstream mass media. We covered the new changes to Facebook and the implications for business and ran through a number of case studies who have used blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other applications to get closer to their customers.  To me Social Media should be part of every businesses marketing strategy and especially if you are a business that likes to stay close to your customers and values two interaction. So integrate your social media strategy with your online strategy asap.

We will be running another event soon so stay tuned!

Feedback was great ie ”You guys rock”, “Very Inspiring”, “Great information”, “Now I have a direction”; “hey this stuff works”, “thanks for the real world examples”.

Rob Hartnett & Jasmine Batra

Building Trust Workshop

I spoke at a marketing breakfast for Connect Marketing and challenged the audience to tell me what were the five reasons people don’t buy. I got back some fabulous responses all sort of right. Of course the first one is no money which is actually the last one. The ones I liked the best were

1. You have not emotionally connected with their truest desires (what the?)

2. Your value proposistion has not moved them sufficiently

3. You have not moved them into fear quickly enough ( a sales coach - these people make my life hell!)

So there were many more and show how many books by Kotler, Godin and the like they had all read. Well done and good profits to Amazon but they stuggled with the number one reason. That reason starts with T and its TRUST. We don’t buy because the seller be it a brand or person has not developed enough trust with us so we give other reasons for the most part why we can’t/won’t buy ie no money, no help and the like. Remember all the time in our sales and marketing efforts we must be building trust with our current and future customers. Go Mr T!