The Problem Most organisations try to sell before they have earned the right to. They skip straight to outreach, proposals, and pitches – and wonder why buyers are not listening. It is not a quality problem. It is a sequence problem.

The Shift Engage first. Be visible and useful where buyers research before any conversation begins. Then communicate value – not information, but translation. Convert your capability into the buyer’s specific outcome, language, and risk.

The Solution When you engage and communicate well, selling becomes the natural next step – not a hard ask. Fix the order. Change everything.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note

This is Article 2 in Barrett’s 2026 blog series: Engage, Communicate and Sell Better – a nine-part series exploring why sales, marketing, and digital must now operate as one commercial system, and what that requires of your people, your content, and your culture. Article 1: We Are in the Weeks Where Decades Happen. Article 2: Why the Sequence Matters. This piece. Coming: The Three Disciplines | The Invisible People Gap | The Generational Buying Committee | The Four Questions Buyers Ask Before They Call You | The Double Gap Research | The Commercial System That Closes It. Each article stands alone. Together they build the full argument.

Most organisations try to sell before they have earned the right to. That is why most of what they put into the market – the emails, the LinkedIn posts, the cold calls, the proposals – feels like noise to the buyers on the other end.

It is not a quality problem. In most cases the product is sound, the team is capable, and the intention is genuine. It is a sequence problem. They have the steps in the wrong order.

Engage, communicate, and sell better is not a slogan. It is the operating logic for becoming signal in a world full of noise.

Step One: Engage

Engaging is not broadcasting. It is not scheduling three LinkedIn posts a week or refreshing your website’s homepage image. It is the discipline of being present, visible, and genuinely useful in the places where buyers go when they are thinking about problems you could help them solve – before they are ready to buy, before they have raised their hand, before they know they need you.

What does this look like in practice?

• Your website passes the 20-second test: a buyer lands on it and within twenty seconds understands not only what you do, but what their business achieves by working with you.
• Your people are active in the channels where buyers research – contributing real perspective, not corporate noise.
• Your content answers the questions buyers are actually asking, not the questions you wish they were asking.

Engage is about being found and felt before a conversation begins. It is the work that makes every subsequent interaction warmer, more relevant, and more likely to proceed.

Most organisations skip this kind of engagement entirely. They go straight to outreach. Then they wonder why the response rate is low.

Step Two: Communicate Value

Once a buyer has found you – or agreed to a conversation – the second failure point arrives. Most organisations default to information delivery: features, capabilities, credentials, case studies. They treat communication as the transfer of content from one party to another.

That is not communication. That is a brochure with a pulse.

Real communication in a commercial context is translation. It takes what you know and converts it into what the specific buyer needs to understand – in their language, framed around their risk, articulated in terms of their specific outcome. A property developer needs to know what their residents experience and what their compliance risk looks like. A healthcare operator needs to understand what their precinct achieves and what their maintenance cost does over ten years. A CFO needs to hear margin, risk reduction, and return – not a product walk-through.

Buyers do not need more information. They can find that in seconds online. What they cannot find on their own is someone who translates your capability into their specific situation. That is the communication gap – and it is where most deals are lost before price is ever mentioned.

Step Three: Earn the Right to Sell

When you have engaged well and communicated value clearly, selling is not a hard ask. It is the natural conclusion of a process the buyer has already been part of. But now it provides additional benefits beyond just a product or service they acquire:

• They feel understood.
• They can see what they achieve.
• They trust the people they will be working with.
• The commercial conversation – price, terms, scope – happens in that context, not instead of it.

Compare that to the organisation that skips the first two steps. They call before proximity is built. They present before trust is earned. They quote before the buyer understands what they are buying. Then they face objections on price, on timing, on fit – that are really expressions of uncertainty the organisation created by getting the sequence wrong.

Selling better is not revolving around a closing technique. A deal is the outcome of engaging and communicating better first. The sequence is the system that leads to a close – not some heavy lifting at the very end of the process.

Check Your Own Order

If you are struggling with conversion rates, pipeline velocity, or deals that stall before the finish line, the instinct is usually to improve the pitch, sharpen the proposal, or train the team on objection handling. Sometimes that helps. More often it treats the symptom.

The more useful question is: are you getting the sequence right? Are you engaging before you ask for the meeting – or are you asking for the meeting and hoping engagement follows? Are you conveying value before you send the proposal – or are you sending the proposal and hoping it communicates value on its own? Are you earning the right to sell – or are you just selling and wondering why buyers are not listening?

Fixing the order changes everything. Not because the underlying capability changes, but because buyers experience it completely differently when it arrives in the right sequence.

Next in the series: the three commercial disciplines – business development, digital social selling, and prospecting – that most organisations are running as one, and why that is where the sequence breaks down first.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post Why the Sequence Matters: Engage. Communicate. Then Earn the Right to Sell. appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: More than 60% of B2B buying decisions are shaped before a buyer ever calls you. We assessed 229 organisations. Three in four presented as noise. Their communication stated capability, not value. The shortlist closed without them.

The Shift: Marketing as brand stewardship is dead. Cold calling as the sole prospecting method is dead – younger buyers are not answering their phones. The old “us vs them” between marketing and sales creates a seam where trust should form.

The Solution: Engage, communicate and sell better. It is a sequence, not a slogan. The C-suite sets the commercial language. Marketing deploys it. Sales embodies it. Same language. No handoff. Just integration.

In 3 Minutes: Your customer is in Continuous Partial Attention Mode. They have not lost attention. They have lost tolerance for irrelevance. Ask your five questions. If they make you uncomfortable, that is the beginning of the signal. The real question is whether your buyers are deleting you.

In 3 Minutes

Your LinkedIn timeline. Your email inbox. Your phone notifications. A wall of commercial “Noise”. Generic pitches. Product-led feature dumps. Automated spam. About them, not you. You don’t read them anymore; deleting them is now just muscle memory.

But occasionally, something cuts through. A message that names your actual problem. An article from someone who clearly understands your world. That is “Signal”. You respond.

Now let’s switch perspectives: when your salespeople are prospecting, and marketing is sending out content – are you “Signal” or “Noise”? Because when your buyers are out there researching where to go, who to call, what to respond to – with more than 60% of the decision shaped before they ever call you – what they find determines whether you make the shortlist. Or whether they even take your call.

Currently, most organisations present as noise without realising why. And it is costing them.

What Our 2026 Research Found

We ran a simple test. One question: “Would I engage with them?”

We assessed 229 ANZ B2B organisations the way a buyer does – anonymously, online. Three in four just present noise. Not because their product was bad. Because their commercial communication was broken. They stated capability. They did not translate value. They made buyers feel nothing.

The “Weeks Where Decades Happen” Are Here for Sales Too

There is a saying: “There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen.”

Post-COVID, B2B buying changed in weeks. The shortlist now forms before a sales conversation. Most organisations are still operating on the old decades. The buyers moved on without them.

The phone call, cold or warm, as the sole way to get a conversation is old school. Younger buyers especially are not answering their phones. They screen calls. They let unknowns go to voicemail.

The assumption that you can call first and build relationship later is dangerous in 2026. Buyers have already researched. They have already formed a shortlist. If you are invisible in the channels where that research happens, your call lands cold – not because you are a bad salesperson, but because the buyer never had a reason to warm to you before you picked up the phone. Prospecting without proximity does not convert.

In 2026, the rules have changed. Your customer is operating in Continuous Partial Attention Mode. They have not lost their ability to pay attention. They have lost their tolerance for irrelevance.

So the question is not *”How do I overcome an 8-second attention span?”* It is “How do I prove I am relevant within the first 8 seconds, so they choose to give me their attention?”

That changes everything about how you prospect. How you do marketing. How you communicate value.

What the B2B Marketing Leaders Forum Confirmed

Last week, over 500 CMOs gathered in Sydney at a B2B Marketing Conference. The forum discussed the key marketing topics our research already found – value, trust, findability, shortlisting via AI.

But here is what was not in the room – the link to what sales needs to do differently. Digital social selling – how individual salespeople build visibility and proximity where buyers decide – was not on the agenda.

The forum diagnosed the marketing symptoms. Barrett’s research identified the root cause across the whole organisation.

 Stepping out of the Noise

That root cause is simple. Most organisations have not learned to engage, communicate and sell better.

Not as a slogan. As an operating system for becoming Signal instead of Noise.

Engage first – be visible and useful where buyers research. Communicate value – translate what you do into what the buyer achieves and feels. Then earn the right to sell – as the natural next step in a conversation that started long before the first call.

Most organisations try to sell before they have engaged or communicated value. That is why they are noise.

The Shift No Commercial Leader Can Afford to Miss

• For marketing leaders: Brand stewardship and vanity metrics are dead. Your job is getting buyers to engage and contact you. The measure is qualified inbound from buyers who recognise your value and feel understood.
• For sales leaders: Volume prospecting is dead. If your people are invisible where buyers research, their calls land cold. Prospecting without proximity does not convert.
• For the C-suite: Marketing cannot do this alone. Sales cannot do this alone. In 2026, marketing and sales work together. Or they lose together.

The organisations winning right now are those where marketing builds digital assets that make buyers feel understood – and sales builds human proximity that makes buyers feel certain. Same commercial language. No handoff. Just integration.

That is engage, communicate and sell better.

The Five Questions That Determine Who Wins

Ask yourself these questions about your own organisation.

Q1. Online, can a prospect see in under 20 seconds what their business achieves by working with you?

Q2. When buyers research you, do they feel understood – or talked at?

Q3. Is any competitor already making their advantage felt online? If not, the first to create certainty owns the shortlist. That could be you.

Q4. Are the named humans who deliver your service visible through the buying research phase?

Q5. When your teams are in front of clients, are they conversing about what clients need to achieve – or presenting products and quoting prices?

What Your Answers Reveal

Q1–Q3 are whole-of-company commercial questions. Does your organisation have a shared language that translates capability into buyer value? The C-suite owns this. Marketing deploys it.

Q4 is shared accountability. Every salesperson and technical expert must be visible and credible online. Sales leadership enables it. The C-suite prioritises it.

Q5 is sales’ accountability. Can your people translate value into the buyer’s specific language?

The organisations that win are those where the C-suite sets the commercial language, marketing translates it into value ladened assets, and sales embodies it in conversations. Same language. No handoff.

An Invitation

Fixing this is not difficult. You just need to know where to look and what to do.

If the five questions made you uncomfortable, that discomfort is the beginning of the signal.

You know what noise feels like. You delete it every day. The question is whether your buyers are deleting you.

Request a presentation on the full research and/or benchmark your organisation from the buyer’s perspective: Reply to this email or contact Barrett directly on (+61) 3 9533 0000.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Author’s Note: This article is based on Barrett’s proprietary GYSAT research across 229 ANZ B2B organisations. If you would like to benchmark your organisation against the five questions and the nine gaps, and see how you compare to your peers, simply reply to this email or contact us directly.

Testimonials & Feedback

“Great insights and devices to apply for our sales process that will have immediate impact. Greatly appreciated” “Loved the neuroscience behind it, would like to do more on closing deals too” “Sue’s teachings and skills were invaluable to help reorient our thought process around selling, customer service and the psychology behind a buying decision. Would recommend Sue and Barrett as an organisation to any business willing to upskill their toolbox here” Participant feedback from a recent ‘Engage, Communicate, Consult and Sell Better’ workshop – IT & SaaS Sales

Related Articles

• Digital Stagecraft: Engage, Communicate & Sell Better in the Digital Age
• The Sales Veteran’s Dilemma: Why the Best Keep Raising Their Game

The post Are You Signal or Noise? The 5 Questions That Determine Who Wins in B2B appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem SMEs are paying tech giants for visibility and getting ghost leads in return. LinkedIn’s algorithm rewards large budgets and starves small ones – producing leads that look acceptable but never convert. The same structural penalty runs across Facebook and Instagram.

The Shift Stop broadcasting. Start occupying. Strategic commenting, genuine DMs, and direct conversation build more real visibility than paid campaigns ever will.

The Solution Move people to owned media – email, Substack, podcast. Use LinkedIn to bring people in, then give them somewhere the algorithm cannot touch.

In 3 Minutes

You are paying to be seen. And you are disappearing. That is not a marketing failure. That is the system working exactly as designed. LinkedIn’s advertising algorithm is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do – just not in your favour.

LinkedIn was built on a promise: professional visibility, genuine connection, business credibility. So was Facebook. So was Instagram. The promise is the same. So is the betrayal. The consequences are dire: If decision-makers cannot see you, relate to you, or find you when it matters, no amount of sales skill closes that gap. You are not even in the room. You never get your seat at the table. And the platforms charging you to fix that problem are making it worse.

Which makes what I am about to say about LinkedIn’s advertising platform particularly important. Because LinkedIn is supposed to be the professional platform built for exactly this problem – visibility, connection, influence, credibility. And yet its advertising model is structurally designed to work against the businesses that need it most.

The Algorithmic Double Jeopardy

Marketing scientist Andrew Ehrenberg identified the Law of Double Jeopardy decades ago. Smaller brands suffer twice: fewer buyers, and lower loyalty from those buyers. AI-driven advertising platforms have supercharged this effect.

LinkedIn’s advertising algorithm learns from conversion signals – clicks, form fills, purchases. Large companies running large budgets generate enormous data streams. The algorithm gets smarter, faster, and cheaper for them. Smaller businesses, running smaller budgets, generate too few signals for the algorithm to find the right audience. So, it stops exploring. It falls back on low-quality, recycled audiences. The campaign underperforms. The business cuts spend. The algorithm starves further.

The large brand’s costs drop. The small brand’s results collapse. The platform calls this optimisation. I call it structural bias baked into the product.

The Numbers Are Not Ambiguous

This is not a theory. The 2026 data is in.

Organic reach on LinkedIn is down 68% from its 2023 peak. Smaller businesses are now forced into a paid auction against enterprise budgets just to reach people already in their own network. Cost-per-lead via LinkedIn’s Lead Gen Forms averages over $800 USD. And expert analysis documents what some are calling “quiet account death” – leads that look acceptable but never convert, because the algorithm learned to find people who fill out forms, not people who actually buy.

This is not just an analyst’s observation. One professional shared their own 12-month enquiry data: 586 LinkedIn leads, 8 sales – a conversion rate of 1.4%. Their assessment was direct: the people responding were simply not their ideal client. That is not a campaign problem. That is the algorithm doing exactly what this article describes.

And LinkedIn is not alone. The same algorithmic penalty applies across Meta’s platforms – Facebook, Instagram – and anywhere else SMEs are told to “boost” their way to visibility. The mechanics are identical: large budgets feed the machine, small budgets starve it. LinkedIn simply stings more, because it charges more and promises more.

When LinkedIn Started Feeling Like Facebook

The feed that was once a curated stream of industry insight and genuine business conversation has become something else. Self-congratulatory posts. Motivational platitudes. An algorithm that buries the people you actually chose to connect with in favour of content it has decided you should see.

It is the Facebook model. And it carries the Facebook consequence: the people you want to hear from disappear, replaced by whoever paid to be visible. Genuine relationship-building – the kind that underpins ethical, human-centred sales – is being crowded out by noise.

So What Do We Do Instead?

• Stop broadcasting and start occupying. The algorithm rewards engagement over publishing. Strategic, thoughtful commenting on the right people’s content builds more genuine visibility than posting into the void, because you are showing up in their feed through their conversations, not fighting the machine with your own.
• Build proximity through direct conversation. A genuine DM, a considered response, a voice note. One real exchange with the right person is worth more than 800 ghost leads. Digital social selling is not about reach. It is about relevance.
• Move people to owned media as fast as possible. LinkedIn is borrowed land. The platform can change the rules overnight – and it does. Your email list, your Substack, your podcast cannot be algorithmically buried. Build there. Use LinkedIn to bring people in, then give them somewhere that is yours.
• Collaborate to reach other people’s audiences. Guest content, joint events, co-created conversations. You borrow proximity from someone who already has it with your ideal clients. This is how visibility compounds without feeding the machine.

The hard truth is that “just post more” is not the answer either – not when organic reach has collapsed alongside paid performance. What works is doing fewer things with more intention: deeper conversations, stronger relationships, owned platforms, and borrowed audiences built on genuine mutual value.

What Needs to Change

These are not anti-LinkedIn arguments. I use the platform for genuine social selling every day and I believe in the power of digital connection done well. However, the advertising product sitting inside LinkedIn is not serving the businesses that need visibility most.

A dedicated SME advertising tier. A separate auction pool for smaller spenders. Transparent reporting that tells small businesses when the algorithm has insufficient data – before they burn through their budget finding out the hard way.

These are not radical ideas. They are the baseline of a platform that genuinely serves the professional community it claims to champion.

You are not alone, and you are not wrong. The system is working exactly as it was designed. Just not for you. That needs to change. And naming it is where change begins.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Testimonials

“I have attended many Sales Training Courses in my 36 Years of working in high pressure Sales Roles. In these courses, the message is relatively all the same, teaching basic techniques. However, the techniques and philosophy of the “ Barrett selling better” course was a breath of fresh air. As a seasoned Sales Campaigner, it brought new insights and thought processes that I had never encountered before. The course and philosophy delve into the mind of the Customer and the Salesperson and gives you interesting tools that you can use.Whether you have entered into a Sales Role for the first time or you are an experienced pro, both will benefit from the “Barrett selling better” in depth course. I highly recommend Barrett Training. “Everybody lives by selling something.”  Industrial B2B sales specialist.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post LinkedIn Promises Visibility. So Why Does Its Ad Model Make SMEs Invisible? appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem. Winning a B2B account triggers a dangerous psychological shift. Salespeople who operated with sharp curiosity during the sale get comfortable once signed. They stop diagnosing and start order-taking – reverting to passive QBRs, single-thread relationships, and a fear of friction. Your established clients are already someone else’s top prospects.

The Shift. Treat every account review like a discovery meeting. Map relationships continuously across the organisation. Keep telling hard truths, even when you have revenue to protect.

The Solution. Holding your seat requires the same commercial courage that won it. Strategic curiosity does not retire when the contract is signed.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note: Welcome to the finale of our 8-week series: The Seat at the Table. Over two months, we traced the full anatomy of a complex B2B sale – from internal leadership alignment, to mastering your first five minutes, navigating to the economic buyer, disarming the silent sceptic, pushing back on bad requests, surviving procurement, and following up like a peer. You did the work. You won the deal. You are now the incumbent. But as this final instalment reveals, earning the seat is only half the battle. Keeping it is where the real work begins.

You won. The contract is signed, implementation is complete, and the client is happy. You navigated the modern B2B buying committee, held your ground on value, and proved yourself a trusted advisor.

You have your seat at the strategic table. Now look around.

Every competitor is strategising on how to take it from you. Your established clients are someone else’s top prospects. Welcome to the most dangerous phase of the commercial lifecycle: the Incumbent’s Curse.

When salespeople work to win an account, they operate with strategic curiosity. They ask sharp questions, challenge assumptions, and hunt for hidden operational friction. But once the deal is signed and the account feels secure, a dangerous psychological shift sets in. They get comfortable. They stop diagnosing and start order-taking.

Here is how even the best salespeople lose their hard-earned status, and how to protect your seat for the long haul.

• 1. The Trap of the Comfortable QBR

  Quarterly Business Reviews are often where trusted advisors go to die. Instead of exploring the client’s future challenges, the incumbent shows up with a slide deck that proves they did what they were paid to do. Past metrics. Happiness check. Exit.

  When you only report on the past, you commoditise yourself.

  Keep the seat: Treat every account review like a brand-new discovery meeting. Before reviewing past performance, bring a fresh insight to the table.

  The language: “I am proud of the ROI we delivered this quarter; however I want to talk about what is coming next. I have noticed a shift in how your competitors are handling [Industry Trend]. How is your executive team planning to navigate that over the next six months, and how does our current setup need to evolve to support you?”

• 2. The Single-Point-of-Failure Relationship

  You fought hard to get past your technical champion and build a relationship with the economic buyer. But once the deal is signed, it is easy to revert to your daily operational contact and stop there.

  What happens when your champion leaves? If you have not continuously mapped the organisation and built relationships across the business, your seat vanishes the moment your primary contact walks out the door.

  Keep the seat: Account mapping never stops. Continuously identify new stakeholders interacting with your solution. Build relationships across departments and up the chain of command so your value is recognised by the broader business, not just one individual.

• 3. The Fear of Introducing Friction

  As a prospector, you have nothing to lose, so you push back and challenge the client’s thinking. As the incumbent, you have revenue to protect. That fear of rocking the boat causes salespeople to say yes to scope creep, or to ignore a client making a strategic mistake.

  The moment you stop telling hard truths, you stop being an advisor and become a yes-person.

  Keep the seat: Your client hired you for your expertise. If they are about to make a decision that will hurt their business or diminish the ROI of your solution, push back just as hard as you did during the sale. Protecting their outcomes, even when it is uncomfortable, is the ultimate proof of your value.

Bringing It Full Circle

Earning a seat at the table is not a one-time event. It is a continuous, daily practice. It requires business leaders to empower their teams and frontline professionals to show up with emotional intelligence, commercial courage, and an unwavering commitment to human-centred selling.

You know how to get your seat. Now go hold it.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Testimonials

“Sue is the best. The course she took us on was great.” “Excellent insights to the mind and body.”  “Excellent very thought provoking.” “Very informative, thought provoking and also eye opening in terms of the changes in the way we now engage using technology, ie AI.” “Having senior management buy in and prepared to make the internal changes to free us up to implement this new way of working is a critical component of ensuring success.”  The latest participant feedback from a 2-day Selling Better kick-off workshop leading into 6 remote team coaching sessions. Industrial B2B sales client.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post The Incumbent’s Curse: You Earned Your Seat. Here Is How You Keep It. appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: A deal stalls, anxiety creeps in, and the salesperson sends the most destructive email in modern B2B: “Just checking in.” In one line, months of trusted advisor positioning collapses into the language of a needy vendor.

The Shift: Order-takers check in. Trusted advisors add value with every interaction. A follow-up is not a chore for the client to manage. It is another opportunity to reinforce your commercial relevance.

The Solution: Follow up with a Give to Get insight, anchor to the cost of inaction against their own timeline or grant permission to close. Stop checking in. Start showing up.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Part 7 of our 8-week series: The Seat at the Table. Over the past six weeks, we have traced the anatomy of a complex B2B sale, from internal leadership alignment to surviving the procurement firewall. If you have made it this far, the proposal is in, the stakeholders are aligned, and the deal is sitting on the client’s desk. And then… silence. This week, we tackle the agonising waiting game, and how to follow up without losing your hard-earned status as a trusted advisor.

You did everything right. You mastered the first five minutes, navigated to the economic buyer, held your ground on pricing, and successfully made it through Procurement. The client told you they just needed a few days to get the final signature.

A week goes by. Nothing. Then two weeks.

The anxiety sets in, and you succumb to the most destructive habit in modern sales. You open your email and type:

“Hi Sarah, just checking in on this. Bubbling this to the top of your inbox. Let me know if you have any updates.”

In one sentence, you have completely dismantled your positioning as a peer and a trusted advisor.

Why “Just Checking In” Kills Your Status

Order-takers check in. Vendors touch base.

When you send a “just checking in” email, you are doing two damaging things. First, you are adding zero commercial value to the client’s day. You are simply creating a chore for them to reply to. Second, you are signalling that your primary concern is your own pipeline, your own quota, and your own timeline.

A trusted advisor never sends an empty email. Every single interaction, even a follow-up, must reinforce your position as a valuable business partner.

Here is how to follow up without sounding like a needy vendor.

• 1. The Give to Get Follow-Up

  If you need an update on a stalled deal, you have to earn the right to ask for it by providing a piece of value first. This proves you are still thinking about their business, not just their signature.

  The strategy: Send a short, highly relevant article, a data point, or an observation that ties directly back to the business problem they are trying to solve.

  The language: “Hi Sarah, I saw this report on supply chain bottlenecks this morning and it immediately made me think of the Q3 challenges we mapped out last month. Thought you might find page 4 interesting. No need to reply to the article itself but let me know if your internal timeline for our project has shifted at all.”

• 2. The Cost of Inaction Reminder

  Sometimes deals stall simply because the client gets busy and loses their sense of urgency. Instead of asking them to hurry up for your sake, gently remind them why they need to hurry up for their sake.

  The strategy: Anchor your follow-up strictly to the operational timeline and business outcomes the client originally gave you.

  The language: “Hi Sarah, when we last spoke, you mentioned it was critical to have this integrated before your busy season hits in November. Working backward from there, we would need to begin implementation by next Tuesday to hit your target. Let me know if that November goal is still the priority, or if we need to adjust the timeline.”

• 3. The Permission to Close

  If the client has gone completely dark and ignored multiple value-driven follow-ups, do not keep chasing them for months. It looks desperate. A true peer knows when to respectfully pull back and relieve the pressure. Often, giving the client permission to say “no” or “not yet” is the exact thing that prompts an immediate, honest reply.

  The strategy: Send a brief, polite email asking if you should close the file on your end.

  The language: “Hi Sarah, usually when communication slows down on a project like this, it means internal priorities have shifted or budget has been reallocated. If that is the case, no problem at all. Let me know if I should pause this on my end so I am not clogging up your inbox, or if you would still like to keep it active.”

Your commercial identity does not pause between meetings. Every time your name appears in their inbox, you are either reinforcing your value or eroding it.

Stop checking in. Start showing up as the advisor they hired.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post Stop “Just Checking In”: How to Follow Up Like a Trusted Advisor appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: After months of strategic selling, the deal lands on a procurement officer’s desk whose mandate is to commoditise your offering and drive the price down. Salespeople either fight Procurement as an enemy or cave instantly, and both destroy hard-won value.

The Shift: Procurement is not the final boss. They are a new stakeholder with different KPIs: risk mitigation and total cost of ownership, not strategic outcomes. Translate your value into their language.

The Solution: Refuse to be isolated from your champion, sell on TCO and risk, never concede without extracting equal value in return, and treat Procurement as a skilled peer.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Part 6 of our 8-week series: The Seat at the Table. Over the past five weeks, we have charted the journey from internal alignment all the way to delivering the strategic pushback. You’ve secured the right stakeholders, managed the sceptics, and held your ground on value. The business unit loves your solution and is ready to sign. But then, you hear the dreaded phrase: “I just need to hand this over to Procurement to finalise.” This week, we explore how to maintain your trusted advisor status when the conversation shifts from strategic value to spreadsheets and line items.

You have run a flawless sales process. You navigated the buying committee, aligned with the economic buyer, and pushed back on scope creep to protect the integrity of the solution. Your champion smiles and says, “We are fully on board. I am handing you over to our Procurement team to finalise the paperwork.”

For many salespeople, this is where the panic sets in.

You spent months building a relationship based on strategic value, emotional intelligence, and business outcomes. Now you are facing a department whose mandate is often to commoditise your offering, strip away the relationship value, and drive the price down.

If you treat Procurement as an enemy, you will get bogged down in an adversarial battle. If you immediately cave to their demands, you destroy the value you just spent months building.

To keep your seat at the table, you have to recognise that Procurement is not the final boss trying to ruin your deal. They are simply a new stakeholder with a completely different set of KPIs. Here is how a trusted advisor navigates the procurement firewall.

• 1. Do Not Let Them Isolate You

  Procurement’s strongest tactical advantage is isolation. They want to separate you from your champion and the economic buyer so the conversation becomes exclusively about price rather than business impact.

  Your goal is to stay tethered to the business unit’s original objectives. If Procurement asks for a significant cut to the budget, do not negotiate in a vacuum. Bring the champion back into the conversation.

  The language: “I understand your mandate to reduce costs by 15%. However, this solution was custom-built with [Champion’s Name] to solve a critical operational bottleneck by Q3. If we cut the budget by 15%, we have to remove the implementation support, which puts their Q3 target at serious risk. I need to bring [Champion’s Name] back into this conversation to confirm they are comfortable taking on that operational risk before we alter the proposal.”

• 2. Speak Their Language: Risk and Total Cost

  While the business unit buys outcomes, Procurement buys risk mitigation. If you try to sell Procurement on the same strategic benefits you used with the CEO, it will fall flat. You need to translate your value into their language: Total Cost of Ownership and risk reduction.

  The language: “I know there are cheaper vendors on your spreadsheet. But our pricing includes full data compliance auditing and hands-on change management. If a cheaper vendor fails to drive user adoption, your total cost of ownership skyrockets because you will be paying for software your team is not using. Our fee is an insurance policy against a failed rollout.”

• 3. Enforce the Give and Get Rule

  Procurement professionals are trained negotiators. They will almost always ask for a concession simply because it is their job to ask. If you drop your price without asking for anything in return, you signal that your margins were artificially inflated.

  If you must make a commercial concession, you must extract equal commercial value in return. This maintains the peer-to-peer dynamic.

  The language: “We do not discount our core services. However, if your budget is strictly capped at that number, I can get us there if we adjust the payment terms. If you can agree to pay 100% upfront rather than our standard Net-60, I can authorise that pricing adjustment today.” Other gets could include a longer contract term, a case study agreement, or adjusted SLAs.

• 4. Respect Their Role

  The fastest way to lose your seat at the table is to act like you are above the procurement process. Never treat a procurement officer like an administrative hurdle. Treat them as a highly skilled peer who is protecting their company’s bottom line, just as you are protecting your company’s value.

When you engage Procurement with professional respect, hold your ground on your pricing integrity, and tie every financial decision back to the business unit’s risk, you do not just survive the process. You prove exactly why you are worth the investment.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post How to Keep Your Seat When Procurement Enters the Room appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: Clients routinely test sales professionals with compressed timelines, unjustified discounts, or requests to strip down the solution. Most salespeople fold, fearing the deal will walk.

The Shift: Saying yes to a bad request is a trap. It erodes margins, sets delivery teams up to fail, and quietly lowers the client’s respect for you. Order-takers please. Trusted advisors push back to protect the integrity of the outcome.

The Solution: Hold your ground on timelines, sell on value not price, and refuse to deliver fragmented solutions you know will not work. Saying no earns you the right to stay at the strategic table.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Part 5 of our 8-week series: Get Your Seat at the Table. Over the past month, we’ve covered the internal alignment required to empower your team, how to master your first five minutes in the room, navigating to the economic buyer, and disarming the silent sceptic. You are now firmly seated at the strategic table. But this week, the dynamic shifts. The client is engaged, but they test your boundaries with a request that compromises the solution. Today, we explore why having the courage to push back is the ultimate proof that you are a trusted advisor, not an order-taker.

You are deep into the sales process. The buying committee is bought in, the solution fits perfectly, and you can practically feel the deal closing.

Then the client leans forward and says: “We love the proposal. But we need you to deliver it in half the time, and we need a 20% discount to get it past Finance.”

In that exact moment, your commercial identity is decided.

The instinct of an order-taker is to please. They smile nervously, say, “Let me take that back to my team and see what we can do,” and then spend the next three days begging their own manager for a margin cut.

When you do this, you instantly strip yourself of your trusted advisor status. You prove that your original price was inflated, your timelines were arbitrary, and your primary goal is winning the deal, even if it means compromising the quality of the outcome.

Trusted advisors operate differently. They know that order-takers say yes to everything, but true partners know how to push back.

The “Yes” Trap

Salespeople fall into the “Yes” trap out of fear. We are terrified that introducing friction will cause the client to walk away. But saying yes to a bad request, whether it is an impossible implementation date, a stripped-down solution that will not actually solve the problem, or an unjustified discount, is a trap.

It sets your delivery team up for failure, it erodes your profit margins, and ironically, it lowers the client’s respect for you. If a doctor prescribed a six-month physical therapy plan and you asked if you could just do it in two weeks for less money, the doctor would not say, “Let me see what I can do.” They would tell you no, because agreeing would jeopardise your health.

You need to protect your client’s business outcomes with that same level of professional integrity.

How to Deliver the Strategic Pushback

Pushing back is not about being arrogant or difficult. It is about holding your ground to protect the value of the solution. Here is how to navigate the three most common client tests without breaking rapport.

• 1. The Unrealistic Timeline Pushback

  When a client demands a compressed timeline, they are usually trying to hit an internal KPI. They do not realise the operational risk they are introducing.
  The language: “I understand the pressure to get this launched by Q3. But if we compress the timeline by a month, we have to skip the diagnostic phase, and that introduces a massive risk to your data migration. My job is to ensure this implementation is seamless, and I cannot agree to a timeline that sets your team up to fail. If Q3 is a hard deadline, we need to reduce the scope of Phase 1.”

• 2. The Unjustified Discount Pushback

  If you immediately drop your price when asked, you are telling the client you were overcharging them in the first place. Sell on value, not on price.
  The language: “I appreciate that budget is tight. Our pricing is directly tied to the outcomes we mapped out together last week. We do not artificially inflate our prices just to discount them later. However, if that number is a hard ceiling for Finance, let’s look at the proposal together and decide which capabilities we can remove to bring the investment down to that level.”

• 3. The Frankenstein Solution Pushback

  Sometimes a client will try to unbundle your solution, picking random elements to save money and creating a fragmented approach that will not solve their core problem.
  The language: “We can certainly remove the change management training from the proposal, but I strongly advise against it. The technology is only 20% of the solution; user adoption is the other 80%. If we deploy the software without training your frontline staff, your ROI will plummet. I would rather walk away from this project than sell you a solution I know will not work.”

Saying no is terrifying the first time you do it. But it is the exact moment the dynamic shifts. When you push back to protect the integrity of the work, the client stops seeing you as a vendor chasing a deal and starts seeing you as a peer protecting their business.

Hold your ground. You earned your seat at the table. Now act like you belong there.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post The Strategic Pushback: Why Saying ‘No’ Earns You the Right to Be There appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: In buying committee meetings, sales professionals instinctively focus on the engaged, enthusiastic stakeholders and avoid the quiet, sceptical ones. That sceptic – the operational manager whose team will live with your solution – goes unheard in the room, then kills the deal the moment you leave.

The Shift: Managing a room means managing the whole room, especially the people who are not nodding. Unvoiced risk does not disappear; it reappears later, without you there to address it.

The Solution: Draw out the sceptic directly, validate their concern without defending, and give them a meaningful role in the evaluation process. That is how you convert a Silent Assassin into an ally.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Part 4 of our 8-week series: Get Your Seat at the Table. Over the past three weeks, we explored how to align your internal executive team, master your first five minutes in a client meeting, and navigate respectfully past your champion to reach the true economic buyer. This week, we assume you have made it into the boardroom with the full buying committee. But getting the right people in the room is only the setup. Knowing how to manage their distinct personalities is where you secure the deal. Today, we are looking at how to handle the most dangerous person at the table: the quiet sceptic.

You finally made it. You are sitting at the boardroom table with the full buying committee. Your technical champion is smiling. The CFO is nodding along as you walk through the ROI. The energy is good, and everyone seems aligned.

Everyone, that is, except for the person at the end of the table.

Arms crossed. Not a single question asked. Staring at your slides with an expression somewhere between boredom and mild contempt.

Here is the instinct most sales professionals follow: ignore them and focus on the nodders. When you are presenting a complex solution, it feels safe to make eye contact with the people who are validating your points. Engaging the stern, silent stakeholder feels like inviting unnecessary friction.

That instinct will cost you the deal.

We call this person the Silent Assassin. The moment you leave the room; they are the one who quietly kills the project.

Why They Are Dangerous – And Why They Are Silent

The Silent Assassin is rarely malicious. In most cases, they are the operational stakeholder: the IT manager who has to integrate your software, the HR lead who has to manage the change fatigue from your new process.

While the CEO is focused on the shiny strategic outcome, the Silent Assassin is looking at the implementation nightmare. They are silent because they feel their practical concerns are being drowned out by executive enthusiasm. But when the meeting ends and the CEO turns to the room and asks, “So, what do we think?” – the Silent Assassin will quietly say, “It’s going to break our current API, and my team does not have the bandwidth to fix it.”

Deal over.

To hold your seat at the table, you must manage the entire room, not just your cheerleaders. Here is how to disarm the Silent Assassin before you leave.

• 1. The Direct Draw-Out

  Do not wait for them to raise their hand. As a trusted adviser, it is your job to facilitate the room and ensure all concerns are aired while you are still there to address them. Invite the friction directly, but respectfully.

  “Sarah, we have spent a lot of time on the high-level strategic outcomes. But since you oversee day-to-day operations, I imagine you are looking at this through a different lens. What are the integration headaches or roadblocks you can see that we have not addressed yet?”

• 2. Validate the Friction – Do Not Defend

  When you draw them out, they will likely give you a blunt, worst-case scenario. The worst thing you can do is immediately defend your solution with a slick reassurance like, “Oh, our onboarding team handles all of that!” That response dismisses their concern and confirms their scepticism. Validate the friction instead.

  “That is a completely fair concern. If we do not map the data migration correctly, it will create a bottleneck for your team. Walk me through how your current system is structured so we can work out whether that is a risk we can actually mitigate.”

• 3. Deputise Them as the Risk Officer

  If you cannot solve their technical or operational concern on the spot, do not guess. Empower them by giving them a specific role in the evaluation process. This converts them from a passive sceptic into an active participant.

  “I do not want to give you a half-answer on the API integration right now. Sarah, would you be open to a 15-minute call on Thursday with my lead engineer? I want your team’s technical requirements to be the baseline for how we build this proposal.”

A vendor pitches to the people who are smiling. A trusted adviser actively searches the room for unvoiced risk and brings it into the light.

Stop looking at your champion. Start talking to the sceptic.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post How to Survive the “Silent Assassin” in Your Next Client Meeting appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: You nailed the meeting. Your contact loves the solution. But weeks pass, the deal stalls, and budget approval never comes – because you were sitting at the wrong table. Your Technical Champion believes in you but cannot close the deal alone.

The Shift: In a tight economy, financial decisions move upward. The person who feels the pain rarely holds the purse strings. Single-threading through your champion means asking a non-salesperson to sell your value proposition to a sceptical CFO. They will almost always fail.

The Solution: Go with your champion, not around them. Co-author the business case. Ask about the approval process. Then request the introduction – framing it as strategic alignment, not a sales escalation. Earn the right room.

In 3 Minutes

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Part 3 of our 8-week series: The Seat at the Table. Over the first two weeks, we laid the groundwork — aligning your internal executive team and mastering those crucial first five minutes in the room. You’ve established a peer-to-peer dynamic and earned your seat. But are you sitting with the right people? This week, we tackle the dangerous difference between a technical champion and an economic buyer, and how to navigate upwards without burning bridges.

You nailed the first five minutes. You established a peer-to-peer dynamic, asked sharp discovery questions, and built genuine rapport. Your contact loves the proposed solution. They are nodding enthusiastically, telling you it is exactly what their team needs.

You leave feeling victorious. You have a seat at the table.

Then weeks turn into months. The deal stalls. Emails go unanswered, or you get the dreaded: “I’m still trying to get budget approval from my boss.”

The harsh reality of B2B selling is this: you can do everything perfectly, however if you are sitting at the wrong table, the deal will not close. Earning a seat is only half the battle. Being in the room where actual financial decisions are made is the other.

The Champion vs. The Economic Buyer

In a tight economy, buying committees expand and financial scrutiny shifts upwards. The person who feels the daily operational pain – your Technical Champion – is rarely the person who holds the purse strings: the Economic Buyer.

Your champion is crucial, even if they cannot sign the contract. They will advocate for you, help you navigate internal politics, and validate your solution.

However, if you allow your champion to be your sole voice in the executive boardroom, you are single-threading. You are effectively asking a non-salesperson to sell your complex value proposition to a sceptical CFO who cares only about ROI and risk mitigation. They will almost always fail – not because they lack belief in you, but because they lack the language, authority, and political cover to carry it alone.

How to Navigate Upwards Without Burning Bridges

The instinct for many salespeople is to (sometimes aggressively) bypass the champion to reach the real decision-maker. In human-centred selling, going around your champion destroys trust. You must go with them.

Here is how to navigate respectfully from the operational table to the executive boardroom.

1. Co-Author the Business Case

Do not leave your champion empty-handed. Treat them as a partner and equip them for the internal battle.

“I know you see the value here, but when this goes to your CFO for sign-off, they will look at it strictly through the lens of risk and ROI. Let’s spend 20 minutes building a business case together so you have exactly what you need to defend this internally.”

2. The Process Pivot

Instead of demanding access to the boss, ask about their typical buying process. This naturally surfaces the hidden stakeholders without making your champion feel sidelined or inadequate.

“Typically, when we roll out a solution of this scale, someone from Finance or IT needs to weigh in on data compliance and budget allocation. Can you walk me through what your internal approval process usually looks like for a project like this?”

3. Ask for the Introduction – The Alignment Play

Once you know who the Economic Buyer is, ask your champion to bring them into the conversation, framing it as strategic alignment rather than a sales escalation.

“Since this project will directly impact [Strategic Goal], it usually makes sense to bring [Executive Title] in for 15 minutes – just to ensure we are aligned with their broader vision. Would you be open to inviting them to our next check-in?”

A true trusted adviser knows how to map an organisation. They treat their champions with deep respect, but they never mistake operational enthusiasm for purchasing authority.

You worked hard for your seat. Now make sure you carry it into the right room.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post You Got a Seat at the Table. But Are You in the Right Room? appeared first on Barrett Consulting.

The Problem: Most salespeople sabotage their credibility in the first five minutes. They over-apologise, fill time with aimless small talk, or launch straight into a pitch deck. The moment they do, they signal “vendor” rather than “trusted advisor” and lose the peer dynamic before the conversation even starts.

The Shift: The way you open a meeting sets the entire tone of the relationship. Advisors diagnose; vendors present. Your body language, your language, and your agenda-setting either earn you a seat at the table or confirm you were never meant to have one.

The Solution: Own the room from minute one. Replace apologies with anticipation, pivot small talk purposefully, frame the meeting as mutual exploration, and check for shifted priorities before diving in. Peer dynamics are not granted, they are established, and the first 300 seconds are yours to claim.

In 3 Minutes

Welcome to Part 2 of our 8-week series: The Seat at the Table. Last week, we kicked off the series by looking inward – examining why sales leaders must have a seat at their own executive table before their team can earn one with a client. Now that the internal foundation is set, we are moving straight to the frontline. This week, we explore the exact moment the vendor-or-advisor dynamic is decided: the first five minutes of your client meeting.

In 300 Seconds

You did the hard work. You navigated the gatekeepers, articulated a compelling reason to connect, and finally secured the meeting. You are sitting across from the decision-maker.

How you handle the next 300 seconds will dictate the entire dynamic of the relationship.

You cannot get a seat at the strategic table if you walk into the room acting like a subordinate. Yet, under the pressure of a big meeting, even seasoned salespeople might fall back into the “vendor” default. They over-index on awkward small talk, apologise for taking up space, or worse, nervously launch straight into a 20-slide corporate presentation.

The moment you do this, you categorise yourself as a pitching machine, not a peer. You signal that you are there to take orders, not to challenge thinking.

If you want to be treated as a genuine trusted advisor, you have to set the rules of engagement immediately. You cannot expect to earn a seat at the client’s table if you walk in acting like you don’t belong there. Here is how to master the first five minutes of any client meeting to establish a peer-to-peer dynamic.

1. Stop Apologising for Taking Up Their Time

The phrase “Thank you so much for your time today, I know you’re incredibly busy” sounds polite, but commercially, it is a subtle concession of power. It implies that their time is highly valuable and yours is not, framing the meeting as a favour they are doing for you.

Trusted advisors view meetings as an equal exchange of commercial value. You are there because you have expertise that could solve a problem they cannot ignore.

The Fix: Replace the apology with anticipation. Try, “I’ve been looking forward to our conversation today,” or “It’s great to connect. I’m glad we could align our schedules.”

2. Master the “Small Talk Pivot”

Building rapport is a critical part of human-centred selling, but letting aimless chatter about the weather or the weekend drag on for ten minutes drains the energy from the room. It signals that you don’t have a clear plan for the meeting- that you are a passenger, not a pilot.

You need to confidently take the wheel and transition the conversation into business without being abrupt. The goal is to be warm, but purposeful.

The Fix: Use a time-check as your pivot. “It’s great to hear about your trip to the coast. I want to make sure I am respectful of your hard stop at 11:00, so if you’re comfortable, shall we dive into the agenda?”

3. Set a Mutual, Exploratory Agenda

Vendors show up to present. Advisors show up to diagnose. If your opening statement is, “Today I want to show you our new platform and how it can save you money,” you are pitching. You have just put yourself in a box.

Instead, use the first five minutes to frame the meeting as a mutual exploration. You are there to see if there is a fit. This removes the pressure of a “sales pitch” and positions you as someone who values the right outcome over a transaction.

The Fix: Set the stage clearly: “My goal for today is quite simple. I’d love to ask a few questions to understand how your team is currently handling [Specific Challenge]. If it looks like we might be able to help, I can share a bit about how we tackle that. If not, we can shake hands and part ways. How does that sound to you?”

4. Ask the “Alignment” Question

Before you dive into your prepared discovery questions, make sure the client hasn’t shifted their priorities since you last spoke. The business landscape changes rapidly; what mattered to them two weeks ago when they booked the meeting might have changed this morning. If you ignore this, you risk becoming irrelevant in the first 60 seconds.

The Fix: Hand the microphone over early. “When we scheduled this, we agreed to focus on [Topic]. But before we start, is there anything else that has popped up on your radar that we need to make sure we cover today?”

The Standard Starts Here

The seat at the table is not granted to you simply because you have a good product. It is earned by demonstrating from the very first minute that you are a peer, an expert, and a professional who knows how to guide a high-value conversation.

You cannot ask your clients to view you as a strategic partner if you do not see yourself as one. The internal foundation we discussed last week gives you the permission to act this way. Now, it is time to execute. Stop acting like a vendor. Start owning the room. The next 300 seconds are yours.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Barrett Services – Get Your Seat at the Table in 2026

• Critical Soft Skills Training for All Teams
• AI and Human Skills Training – Get Your Teams AI-Ready
• Sales Skills Training
• Sales Playbook Tools & Resources
• Sales Process Mapping & Design
• GTM Sales Strategy Design & Implementation

The post The First 5 Minutes: How to Stop Sounding Like a Vendor appeared first on Barrett Consulting.