The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part VI

Posted by Gavin Ingham on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 · Leave a Comment

So, here we are at week 6 and this week was all about selling… or was it? The task, to sell two identical lots of 10 new and used items for the best possible prices. The team who made the most profit would win.

Sales training and business tip: Profit is not the same as sales revenues. When consulting, I often come across salespeople, sales managers and companies fixated on sales. “Sell! Sell! Sell!” they shout and run out there selling anything that they can at any price. In 2009 many companies have slashed prices to make sales. It may seem obvious but there is little point selling if you don’t make profit!

Leading the sales for Ignite tonight was opinionated Geordie estate agent, Philip and leading Empire, tubby, wannabe army officer, Ben. Ben sprang into action straight away doing what he seems to perform the best at, boasting about himself, “I am a natural born leader… Sandhurst clearly saw that in me and that’s why I got an army scholarship.” But you didn’t go Ben! Get over it already. He didn’t get over it and he continued to lecture about leading people under “heavy gunfire” and managing when there were “people getting injured.” Ben mate, Margaret says you never were in the army, what do you know about leading men under fire?

Sales training tip: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, sales is not about your CV, sales is not about your background and sales is not about talking a good game. Sales is about getting results, consistent results. I don’t care what you say you’re going to do. I care only about what you actually do. And so do your clients. Salespeople who over promise and under deliver ought to go and do something else less results oriented instead.

As our teams began to sift through the weird and wonderful items that Sir Alan has selected for them it was immediately obvious that some of these items were relatively valuable and others were merely red herrings. A life size skeleton, jellied eels, a mountain bike, some vintage shoes, some books, an Indian rug and several others – it quickly became clear that they were not going to apply any kind of logical methodology to this task but were instead going to base their day’s activities on opinion and guesswork.

There is an old personal development story about a man who is asked to mend a piece of equipment in a factory which no-one else can mend. The factory owner is desperate as he cannot produce any goods with his machinery out of action. When the expert arrives he looks all around the machine and eventually pulls out a hammer and hammers in one nail. The factory owner is delighted and thanks him. When the invoice arrives the factory owner is shocked to see that he has been invoiced for $1000 and complains saying that the expert only hammered in one nail. He asks for a break down of the invoice. The expert responds with the following…

Hammering in the nail $5.
Knowing which nail to hammer $995.

Sales training and business tip: Sometimes knowing where to expend your energy is as important as expending energy. Yes, this task required activity. Yes, this task required selling skills. Yes, this task required negotiation skills. But more than that, this task required planning and preparation.

Our teams needed to know which products were the valuable ones, who would want to buy them and where they would best locate those prospects. Time spent understanding this would have increased the value when they came to hammer in their nail. Smart selling is all about maximizing the impact and effectiveness of your sales activities.

Ben split his team into two taking 7 products for his half of the team and leaving the other half of the team only 3 between them. Hmmm. Meanwhile, Philip was continuing his spat with Lorraine by studiously ignoring her comments that she thought that the Indian rug could be valuable. It was.

Sales training and sales leadership tip: As a salesperson or a sales leader it is essential that we judge the reality of a situation not just what we believe. It is really easy to believe that your prospect cannot afford to pay or that you will have to discount to win the deal for example.

People have a habit of seeing what they believe rather than believing what they see. Philip clearly believes that Lorraine is “erratic”. She may well be but because of this, even when she did come out with valuable comments, he dismissed them believing them to be nonsense. As a sales leader you need to get the best out of your sales team and this means utilizing all of their skills. This can be impossible to do if you have such negative beliefs about people that you fail to see even when they can add value to your sales efforts.

That said, Philip was about to prove two other sales truism namely that activity produces results and that you have to ask to get. Undertaking what has to be one of the silliest activities I have ever seen on the Apprentice – walking into a pub (albeit near a hospital) and asking if anyone wanted to buy a skeleton – Philip actually stumbled across someone who had always wanted one and sold it for £160. As I always say to sales teams, you need to work smarter AND harder. This was harder without the smarter and on this occasion it paid off…

Noorul meanwhile was on the phone trying to sell their skeleton. After finding a prospect they drove to him only to be told, “I’m a student, would you be interested in giving a good price?” With nowhere else to go and having driven all the way there, Noorul’s negotiation stance was weak and the best he could come up with was, “What’s the best price?“ to which the prospect said, “£50 really.” Noorul looked gutted and, as tumbleweed blew through Noorul’s negotiation, Ben stepped in to the breach saying that £50 was a bit low and he asked for £60. Nice step in Ben but come on… you should have gone higher than that.The skeleton was sold for £60 to one happy “student” but they’d just been had!

Meanwhile, Philip was hawking the “valuable” rug door to door frustrating Margaret into saying, “I’m speechless… that rug was the most expensive item they had and they have completely ignored its value all day apart from Lorraine.”

Over on team Ben, Debra and Ben were struggling to sell their ambitious 7 items and Ben rang Yasmina and co for help. Yasmina was quick to say that they ought to stick to their plan and that they had things to sell too.

In the board room…

Sir Alan confirmed that this task had nothing to do with selling and everything to do with valuation. The “devil is in the detail” he quipped.

Unfortunately, this was the downfall of tonight’s task as with neither group grasping this concept and both treating it as a purely sales task – sell as much as possible as fast as possible – the resulting results were really more about luck than skill…

Philip and Ignite had oversold some items by £96 and undersold two for a net loss of £34.
Ben and Empire had been somewhat less lucky making a profit of £78 and a loss of £242 giving a net loss of £169.

Not really representative of much but a win for Philip who remains safe despite ignoring his team and focusing on the wrong things so it was over to Ben who elected to bring back Noorul and James. Sorry, Noorul and Debra, or was it James? No, definitely Debra…

Noorul had to go.

He has been hopeless since his first words on the show (”I talk posh and I look posh”), has contributed little of value and was floored by the simplest of client objections today. Ben is too full of himself and too TV friendly to go at this stage much as the arrogant, pumped up, self-aggrandizing twerp needs a kick up the pants…

Suffice to say that there was much shouting in the board room. This mostly involved Debra and Ben although Noorul, perhaps sensing that he was the small fish in a pond full of pike, did give a spirited, yet pointless, defence of himself. This was all more kindergarten than professional business.

Ben tried to sell his somewhat dubious case, “Grafter,” not really mate. “Sales,” err yeah righto. “Good team leader,” are we on the same planet? “I can win this competition,” do you really think so?

But annoying as he may be and mouthy as Debra might appear there was only one ailing fish here, “Noorul, I don’t know what you’ve been doing here, I think you’ve escaped the radar… You’re fired.” And then to Debra, “If you ever open your mouth like that again don’t even bother to come back in this board room.”

So an interesting week with many sales and business lessons but also a week in which I was left feeling that if only we could have sacked 6 (or more!) tonight we could have cut to the chase and let the few real contenders to fight it out. So, here are the remaining 9, fill in the comments form below and share your opinions about what you would do with them!

James.
Ben.
Kate.
Debra.
Lorraine.
Philip.
Howard.
Mona.
Yasmina.