The Sales Apprentice 2008: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part II

With another stirring rendition of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights The Apprentice got under way. Another show, another early morning call that we got so familiar with on the last series. One of the boys answered the phone in a superman t-shirt… I wonder what sales training strategies and tips will we learn tonight?

Tonight their task was to sell laundry services. Sir Alan Sugar had got the teams two industrial laundries and their job was to go out and win business, launder the laundry and then return it to their clients. They must be back in the board room by 2pm the next day. The team with the most profits will win.

Raef immediately offered to lead Renaissance, the boy’s team, and from the girl’s team “award winning” sales woman Jenny offered to step up. “I come from a tough sales background where I have been hugely successful”, she boasted.

Do this lot ever stop blowing their own trumpets and let their sales figures speak for themselves?

Raef quickly got to grasps with organizing his team. Much as I didn’t like him last week tonight he displayed some good management skills by letting the right people do the right jobs. Alex offered to knock on doors and prospect for business and Simon offered to manage the laundry. Due to his army experience in Bosnia Simon knew what was needed for this. “This is hot sweaty grafty work”, said Simon. That decision alone will prove to be a good decision from Raef and Simon’s experience proves invaluable later on.

Meanwhile Jenny started by giving the girls a sales training session. Now as you know I am quite partial to a good old bit of sales training or a rousing motivational speech (!) but there is a time and a place and this was not it. This time should have been spent planning and preparing not going on and on and on…

With another one of those ridiculous phrases I have never heard in any sales team anywhere (“We hit this road until it bleeds money”) the boys went door to door canvassing for customers. Quite quickly they started to close some sales proving that effort and a positive attitude will win business even knocking on doors in a random London street!

The girls meanwhile were not so happy at the idea of prospecting door to door. Canvassing and cold calling was not their bag apparently. “I dont think people will be in on such a beatiful day”, said one of them.

What? No people at all girls? Not even one?

Rubbish!

In my travels running sales training programmes and giving motivational speeches at sales conferences I meet many salespeople who are beaten before they even start. “My database is not good enough”, “There’s a recession on at the moment”, “You won’t be able to get through?”, “They won’t be interested”… and tonight, “I don’t think people will be in on such a beatiful day.”

Yawn!

Ban yourself from saying these kinds of things. Don’t listen to anyone who says them in your presence. Close your mind to them. Don’t even think them. The more you say them, the more likely they are to come true. The more you say them, the more likely they are to happen to you. The more you say them, the harder it will be for you to get the results that you want. Stop it, now!

Renaissance (the boys’ team) and Alpha (the girls’ team) were also bidding for some bigger corporate business which has been lined up for them by Sir Alan. They were to go head to head to compete to see who could close the deal. On the way to the first meeting with a hotel the boys decided to ring a laundry company to work out what to charge. Sometimes picking up the phone just once is enough to get you all of the information you need.

The girls meanwhile decided to make it up! This might not have been so bad had any of them ever been near a laundry which they so clearly hadn’t. In fact, had they had an ounce of common sense they could not have come to the decision that they did come to. Every item is £4.99!

In the client sales meeting the girls stated their pricing structure to the client saying that each item would cost £4.99. The buyer, stunned that his 1000 pieces of laundry were going to cost him just under £5000 to launder asked if this was their best price.

Lindi, who according to the Apprentice website runs sales training courses, started banging on about other “benefits” that the client would get namely two account managers and a 24 hour hotline! That’ll swing it then. Get your cheque book out buddy, it’s a bargain! The price of a small car to talk to two people who don’t know what they’re doing and you can do that at any time of the day - bargainous!

“Hello, do you know where my washing is? No? You’ve lost it? Never mind, can you explain that Feature to me again please? What? Oh, I’m sorry, benefit… my mistake…”

Sales training explanation: A benefit is the pay off to the client of an advantage. 24 hour helplines and two account managers are both features… Not Benefits… Not even advantages… Even if these had been potential benefits (which they weren’t!) we had no idea whether the client cared about them or not at which point they were neither benefits nor relevant.

The boys meanwhile quoted £556. “How do you think that sounds?” they asked. A nice question. The client responded with, “Fine We’ve got some room to negotiate.” And then, “I am lookng for around 200.”

Sales training tip: Listen carefully to what your clients say. This client started with, “Fine”and then asked for a 60%+ discount.

You’d negotiate with him right…? So would I! But the boys didn’t and just accepted the £200 offered!

Back on the girl’s team all was not well. Not surprisingly the cold calling team were failing in their door to door prospecting. They had seemingly made their minds up before they’d even started. The girl’s abandoned their prospecting and tried their hand at B2B sales, approaching businesses directly to attempt to sell some laundry services. This rewarded them with their first sale and £80 but for a group that consisted of an "award-wining" sales person, and “possibly” the best salesperson in Europe I was not impressed.

The next Sir Alan busines client was a fishmonger in Fulham. We were told that the job should cost about £60 but the girl’s quoted £10. From the sublime to the ridiculous! The buyer was clearly flabbergasted. He asked the girls on repeated occassions if they were sure. Short of the chap saying, “Now look here girls, you’ve got the pricing all wrong here. You’ll never make any money underselling yourselves like this. I think you should re-price the job and ask me for more money?” he could not have made it more clear to them that they had it wrong. But despite him giving them several outers (that we saw) they seemed not to notice and gladly picked the “loss making” contract up for £15 including the ironing!!

The boys quoted £49.50 for the same contract. The buyer said that this was a good price but that the girls had quoted less than half the price. Raef said, “We are unfortunately not going to be able to match that”. And the job went to the girls.

Sales training achnowledgement: Well done Raef. Know your market. Know what is profitable. Know when to walk away. Many salespeople and businesses that are failing, fail because the owners and salespeople wrongly believe that you should never turn away business. This is totally wrong. You should know who your customers are, what you do and what you need to charge.

Selling is not just about winning business, it is about winning profitable business.

Under orders half of the boys’s team headed for the laundry. This was a good plan. Selling is no good if you cannot deliver on what you’re selling. The girls meanwhile, knowing that their sales were pitful pushed the envelope and carried on selling to see if they could win any late sales.

Back at the girl’s laundry Shazia took control of labelling. “My job is making sure the right person gets the right clothes” she stated. You may well end up eating that statement Shazia! Running late the girls decided to finish the ironing back at the house and Shazia (sent by Jenny it appeared) headed off homeward bound leaving her “job” to be guessed at by the others!

Back at the house there were no irons or ironing boards for the girls. The boys had snaffled them all earlier and had them in their office at this stage…

A little sales management question: In the boardroom at the end of the task Sir Alan was aghast at the girl’s asking their clients for tips but he never said anything about the boys taking all of the irons and leaving them in their office over night even though they weren’t using them. Was this “sharp” behaviour from the boys or was it just downright sneaky? Let me know what you think… I know what I think.

Anyway, back to the programme…

Next morning the boys delivered their laundry faultlessly and even got a few compliments. The girls meanwhile had mixed up their bags and given the wrong laundry to several customers, losing two shirts in the process.

In the board room…

In the board room Sir Alan was upset about the lost shirts. “You lost the fellow’s shirts!”  he barked and deducted the girls £50. The result was predictable.

The girl’s Alpha team made £195.55. The boy’s Renaissance made £328.

The boys won and departed for The Ritz and afternoon tea. The girls went to a greasy spoon to eat their last supper. Jenny told the camera that she was looking forward to going into the boardroom, “I am the strongest candidate within the team I am working in at the moment and I will be really delighted to get rid of some of the weaker candidates.” A supportive leader then our Jenny.

Back in the boardroom Jenny elected to bring Shazia and Lucinda into the final meeting with Sir Alan. It didn’t look good for her. She agreed the ridiculous price in the first big pitch, she put the wrong people on the wrong jobs, she couldn’t handle Lucinda (with whom she had argued terribly) and, to make matters worse, she doesn’t half labour a point!

That said, Shazia left the laundry unorganised and Lucinda failed to show for a meeting and cried when Jenny had a go at her. Not what you’d expect from a £100k a year apprentice.

After telling Jennie he held her fully resposible for failing to hold her team together Sir Alan fired Shazia. “I think the most heinous thing you did is to leave that laundry. Shazia. You’re fired.”

A bit harsh I thought and that certainly would not have been my decision but then it wasn’t my decision and it is easy to seconde guess!

So another programme packed full of sales training tips, business strategies and ideas. Here are a few sales training themes that stood out…

1. Know your products, services and solutions.

Product knowledge is critical for sales success. If you don’t know what your product is, what it does, why your clients need it and how much it costs then you are never going to sell effectively or profitably.

With one phone call the boy’s were able to get the low down on how to price their product and win that all important £200 contract. The girl’s with their ridiculous pricing strategy were out of the game from the moment that they lost that first big sale.

2. Learn to negotiate.

Understanding the principles of negotiation is essential if you want to be a great salesperson and build a profitable business. Sales skills are very important but so too are negotiation skills. If you fail to sell at the right price you will always struggle to deliver the profits and results that you require.

Despite winning the programme this week the  boy’s negotiation techniques were pitiful for the second week running. This hasn’t mattered as yet but in the real world it woud have. (That’s why seminars like my Sales Negotiation Skills seminar are so important). You cannot afford to do all of the work and then undersell yourself in this way.

Learning to negotiate and pre-negotiate will help you to secure more profitable sales and higher margins.

3. Sell benefits.

The girls made a cardinal mistake this week of confusing Features for Benefits and assuming the client cared when he didn’t. This is pretty common…

I worked with a major client who told me that his sales team had been through extensive sales training and were experts in sales skills techniques. I was helping them to make powerful and persuasive presentations. During their first presentations of the course it became clear that not one member of the team were able to identify even one benefit of their products This is not uncommon. Many salespeople get wrapped up in features and facts. That’s why its called “feature bashing”. Don’t do it!

Equally imoportantly, make sure that your client cares about what you’re selling. If you’re talking, talking, talking and they don’t care then they won’t be listening and you are about to lose a sale.

4. Work hard.

Boring I know but the boys appeared to work hard this week. They worked hard knocking on doors and, perhaps more importantly, they worked hard in the laundry. Simon was a “little trooper” and it paid off.

Sales is hard work. Anyone who tells you it’s not either hasn’t done it or is lying to you. Selling requires you to work harder than the next person. Some people might tell you that you can work smarter rather than harder but if you do that you will only achieve the same as the less smart salesperson who is working harder than you.

You need to work smarter AND harder! Now you’re talking!

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