The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, Part I

I have to admit that I don’t watch much TV. I don’t have the time. When people talk about "Big Brother", "Eastenders", "I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here"… I have nothing to say because I just don’t watch them. But I do like "The Apprentice". I didn’t see the first series but I really got into the last one. So much so infact that I was positively looking forward to tonight’s first installment. And this made all the more interesting because I know one of the housemates…

Who will the superstars be?

So tonight the new apprentices entered the house. Who will they be? What will they be like? Will they get on? Will they fight? Who’ll be the highly qualified idiot with no common sense? Who will be the blagger who already thinks they’ve made it? Who will the real superstars be? Will there be any? How many of them will be patently not worth anything near £100k?  Surely out of 10,000 hopefuls there must be more people who "have a shot" than last year?! We all waited with bated breath…

Hard work but an easy task by anyone’s standards…

Their first task was to make and sell coffee from two stands per team - one fixed, one stationary. Hard work but an easy task by anyone’s standards. A simple transactional sale - you give me cash, I give you coffee. Some simple calculations of likely sales. A small amount of stock control. Finding a high footfall, latte drinking locale for the mobile van. Make face to face sales. Being ready to move the mobile van if it’s not producing. Get on with it. Easy!

Or so you would have thought…

The list of errors was horrendous… the assumption that because the machine could make 100 cups an hour that you could therefore sell 100 cups an hour! The van sited on a quiet road in a downmarket area with cheaper coffee everywhere! Not moving said van for hours! Not being able to answer a mobile phone or return calls! The lack of management! Driving the vans around willy nilly wasting selling time! Shutting one of the vans on one team!  Having a "meeting" in the middle of core selling hours! I could go on but it’s depressing me… 

But non of these are the Sales Apprentice’s sales training tips for this week…

Nope! Because we can do better that them. Sales training tip of the week comes courtesy of Jadine Johnson… Jadine totally missed the point that this was a transactional sale. If you want to sell as much coffee as possible in a day and you are never going to do it again you sell, sell, sell and deliver good, solid coffee. But like many salespeople trying to impress she made it far more complicated that it was. Her complication of choice… brand Eclipse. What? What on earth was she banging on about brand for? What on earth was she putting Eclipse logos on coffee for? What on earth was that song about Eclipse being the place to buy your coffee from?

Errr… no, it’s a TV show and you’re going to get fired if you don’t wake up and smell the coffee!

Jadine, you just made the name up yesterday. You’re making coffee for one day only. You’re never going to see your customers again! This has nothing to do with brand. It has everything to do with selling. What’s more you don’t know people well either. Sir Alan likes people who get on with it and in a lot of his activities this means selling well. He hates pretension and frankly that’s where you’re at with your irrelevant brand rubbish.

Tre Azam and and the other one who seemed to speak every language under the sun seemed to have it right. Well for the first hour anyway. They were the dream team that any sales manager would have begged for - 55 cups in the first hour… from a mobile stall. Pretty impressive. But not good enought for Jadine. Nope, she split them up and trashed their territory. Why? Because they weren’t promoting the brand Eclipse. What?! What?! What?! Brand has got nothing to do with this - nothing, nothing, nothing.

Look at your sales and make sure that you’re not complicating something that should be easy!

Some sales are really complex. Many are really simple. Salespeople complicate them for all sorts of reason. Look at your sales and make sure that you’re not complicating something that should be easy!

Until next week…
Gavin

p.s. Who thought Andy Jackson was a bit touchy feely? I lost count of the number of times he "touched" the girls. They didn’t say anything. People often don’t. They even "oohed" and "ahhed" when he said something sweet at the end of the exercise. But they trashed him and voted him out anyway. Was this because of the touching? Who knows?

But if you are a bit touchy-feely like Andy, just be careful who you touch… people like me won’t say anything but we don’t like it! You’ve been warned. Andy, wherever you are… if you’re selling cars again… keep your hands to yourself a bit more! You can have that tip for free!