The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part X
In last week’s Apprentice the task was to rent out high end supercars. The team making the most sales would be the winner. A sales task plain and simple and one which created many interesting sales training and business lessons..
Sales managers for the day on the two teams were Michael (leading Helene and Claire) and Lee leading Lucinda and Alex. Their first task was to pick two cars per team that they would have to sell…
Michael picked a Ferrari and a Spyker, Lee an Aston Martin and a Zonda. These cars varied in sales rental quotes massively, from just over £600 per day for the Ferrari to £2750 per day for the Zonda! It’s not often in life that you can call a Ferrari cheap but in this company it most definitely seemed it particularly given the fact that the Ferrari could be sold on an hourly rental but the Zonda was only available by the day!
Sales training and business tip: This choice of cars would prove to be a wise choice for Lee’s team with a clutch of Zonda sales winning the task for him and team Alpha. There’s a lot of talk of risk taking in these shows with little to substantiate the choices. In business and in sales your choice of products and territories should be based on consientious research not guesswork!
Anyhow, this brave decision to go for such an expensive car won the day but it would have been knives at dawn for the person who made that decision if they had failed to sell any!
At the start of the show we saw Michael wandering around with a towel looking less energetic than a hibernating bear. When he found out what the task was he seemed to leak energy and ended up resembling a deflated balloon. He told the camera that he abhorred cars and that, “They are alien to me.” For all the talk of him being young and enthusiastic, there was little evidence of it. He’s only been working for a year (apparently) and he obviously has a thing or two to learn yet about sustained motivation!
Sales training tip: Success in business and sales is not about saying you’re great, it’s about proving it! That requires energy, drive and persistence; you need to keep on going when everyone else has given up and gone home. To be this tired in the middle of what is, after all, only a few weeks worth of work does not bode well…
Meanwhile, over on Lee’s team, all was not well… again! Lucinda, Lee and Alex seemed to have picked up where they left off last week - at each other’s throats! Annoyingly, this is one of those situations where we just haven’t seen enough to judge what is really going on and who is really to blame.
So here’s how I see it… you may agree… or not!
- Lucinda is a bit “kooky” in her berets, hats and scarves and takes a part intellectual, part emotional response to tasks. She has some good points (management) and some bad ones (sales and whining!).
- Lee and Alex are slightly scruffy, self-educated “salespeople” (in the broadest term of the word). They don’t seem to get on with her particularly well and I doubt they would socialise with her out of the programme. They think she is whiny and they don’t think that she adds anything to the team… particularly not in a selling task.
- They do not listen to her… Lucinda clearly suggested the raffle idea but then neither of the boys could or would remember that.
- They dismiss her… sending her off selling by herself after she said, “I don’t want to be myself” and Lee said, “You won’t be!”
Sales management tips: Sales management is not about taking the best accounts and selling into them yourself. Sales management is not about pairing up your best people (Alex and Lee in this case) and abandoning your weaker salespeople to sink or swim. Sales management is not about dismissing your team players when they want to learn. Sales management is not about failing to make decisions and then blaming others for not making them for you (Lee on whether Lucinda should or should not sell tickets for the Zonda, “Just f*****g make a decision!).
Irrespective of the fact that they won or that Lucinda was out of her depth in tonight’s sales task, Lee failed as a sales manager tonight.
Over on team Renaissance another sexual split had taken place only with Helene and Claire splitting away from Michael. Helene and Claire have radically different selling styles from each other with Claire focusing on emotions (“Do you want to hear the engine?” to an enthusiastic male sales prospect and liberal use of emotional language) and Helene focusing on facts (“They want specs” she says).
The final results will speak for themselves with Claire making numerous sales and Helene none.
Sales training tip: People buy on emotion and justify with logic. An impulse purchase of a few hours or a weekend in a supercar is always going to be an emotional choice! The size of the engine and the horsepower is not going to move people to getting their cheque books out! The thought of the wind in your hair, the jealous glances on the street and a pretty person by your side just might!
Michael, meanwhile, was trawling a veritable smorgasbord of locations in London where you would be most unlikely to be able to sell a car! He finished up in the Portobello market in Notting Hill will with a, and I jest not, German food van next to him, a dust cart parked by him and empty black bags strewn all over the road. The Italian Lakes this was not.
Roll up! Roll up! Get your hot bratwursts and schnitzels. Hot and spicy sausages to take away. With or without onions. Oh, and don’t forget your Ferrari rental!
Yeah, righto. Fool!
At 5pm both teams headed for Canary Wharf where they had 4.5 hours to sell as many more rentals as they could. Michael, who thinks he is a great salesperson despite the fact that he sold nothing, is losing it, “If you’re not going to do it for a weekend, at least a day. At least a day. Bl***y h*ll!”
Hopefully, Andy Smith will write something in the comments about emotional intelligence… Emotional intelligence is about self-awareness, about being more aware of how you feel, more aware of how those feelings affect your behaviours and more aware of how those behaviours affect others. It is also about being more aware of other’s emotions and how they affect their communications.
Emotional intelligence is a key skill for salespeople, sales managers, business owners and leaders. Michael was clearly frustrated at this stage and had lost it.
“Inside my brain I’m meant to be a high calibre salesman,” he opined. Yes Michael, and there, like many of your Apprentice “friend” is your problem… inside your head.
In the board room…
- Sir Alan asked Lee why he sent Lucinda by herself.
- He asked Lucinda if she thought she got pushed aside.
- Lee said that you cannot hand hold people. (Maybe not Lee, but to abandon a third of your teamis just foolish).
- Lucinda said that she was impressed with her own improvement during the task.
- Sir Alan pointed out to her that she didn’t sell anything!
- Lucinda said that she was not any good at closing.
- Sir Alan said that selling was about closing deals.
- Sir Alan asked Michael why he went to Portobello Road market where he clearly was never going to sell any cars?
- Michael told Sir Alan that, “He’s be surprised!”
Sales training tip: Don’t fight with reality! You will never win! How can you look like anything but a fool when you sit there and say things like that with the results so horribly stacked against you?”
- Michael said that he was a good salesman.
- Sir Alan asked if he thought that even though he did not sell any cars?
- Michael replied in the affirmative.
The results…
Renaissance with sales manager Michael, £2114. Alpha with sales manager Lee, £11,815 with Alex closing more than £8000 of the sales.
The Renaissance show down…
Back in the board room it became evident that Claire was safe when up against Helene and Michael. Sir Alan seemed unimpressed with both Helen and Michael. Surely Michael, finally, had to go. After some soul searching and some grand claims from both of them about their commitment Sir Alan made his decision, “Michael, I think I have to say to you… you’re fired.”
In the car Michael was busy pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, “He saw something in me that reminded me of what he was like when he was younger.”
I wonder if Sir Alan would put it that way? Unlikely, I think.
Sales training and business lessons from tonight’s show…
Know your market!
Knowledge of your market, who buys from you, when, where and why is critical for your success. Knowing which cars would and would not sell, at what prices and to whom proved to be a decisive factor in tonight’s show.
Perhaps this was luck, perhaps they did some research when we weren’t watching! No matter. If this was your business, then this knowledge would be critical.Claire made many smaller sales tonight but could not compete with the huge daily rental fee of £2,750 of the Zonda.
Work on your sales skills.
In tonight’s show we saw Lee’s team win because they made bigger sales. This was partly due to the more expensive Zonda rental price although also because they were selling full day rentals not hourly ones.
Claire did a good job of “upselling” from one hour to three but seemingly failed to sell any full day or weekend rentals.
You can help yourself to make more sales and at higher prices by getting into the mindset of your clients. £600+ for one day for a Ferrari may seem a lot to our humble (now there’s a word I wouldn’t have thought that I could have got into a sentence about them!) Apprentices but to a city trader with million pound plus bonuses how much is it really?
Let your results speak for themselves.
I’m sick and tired of hearing how good they are.
Prove it.
Many salespeople I work with tell me how good they are. They tell me how good they could be. They tell me how they could close more sales if only… they had a better territory, they were more respected, the market was different, the price was lower, they were more competitive…
Poppycock!
Sales results are all that counts. Not words. I don’t care what you could, might or should have done. That won’t impress me, it won’t impress your boss and it won’t pay the rent!
Michael had no prospects because he did not know how to prospect not because there were no prospects.
Claire made too few bigger sales because she did not go for them not because the clients weren’t there.
Lucinda only made one sale because she spent too much time making some tickets that the team never used rather than speaking to people!
The great thing about sales is that it’s not about education, background or upbringing, it’s about results.
In sales, results speak for themselves. Can you handle it?
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Michael was a character, but is now the last of the dead wood to go. I do believe that the remaining 5 do have skills of some sort. It doesn’t really matter that he should have gone 2 weeks ago, although I do feel Raef could have excelled selling swanky cars to city boys.
Only Claire, Lee and Alex have more than one dimension.
Helen(e) and Lucinda have skills, but are flawed, and do not fit the profile in any way.
On tonights task, I don’t think any tactic with the other vehicles would have outshone the £11,000 in sales for the Zonda. Picking, and selling, the Zonda was the the decision that won the task.
PS. I met a guy last week, who knows Helene well, and that she doesn’t make the final. He also used to employ Syed from 2 seasons ago. There’s a high proportion of recruitment consultants on The Apprentice.
With regard to Michael, I think we’ve all been on the receiving end at one time or another of the kind of sales person (or possibly ’sales person’ as I doubt they sell much like that) who won’t take ‘no’ for an anwswer, as Michael was doing when he followed that poor bloke half way down the street.
If you’re a sales person and you’ve ever wondered why your profession isn’t as highly regarded as it should be, that’s why! You get tarred with the same brush as people like Michael whose emotional radar is on the blink, so they don’t pick up the signals from a prospect who really isn’t interested.
The most interesting thing about this week’s task was Michael’s motivation - where did it go? He boasted in previous weeks that he could fake interest in anything and anyone to make a sale. Not this week he couldn’t. I’m not exactly Jeremy Clarkson (as Gavin will tell you - he’s seen what I drive) but I think I could have mustered a bit of enthusiasm for the amazing machines they had to sell this week.
A more serious point is about values - the things that are important to us, which provide both our motivation and our moral compass that tells us when things are right or wrong.
If the only thing that is important is making the sale, and we don’t have any genuine enthusiasm for anything else, then our motivation can disappear at inconvenient moments and we don’t have anything in the reserve tank to get us through the tough times - when we’re knackered, or there’s trouble outside work, or we’ve had a setback. By contrast, look how invigorated Lee was!
Also, if nothing much is important to us, we won’t be getting strong interior signals about what’s right and wrong in any given situation - hence, I think, the various ethical scrapes that Michael and one or two of the other candidates (now departed, thankfully) have found themselves in at various times during the series.