How to qualify clients in a win win way
Gavin, you recently wrote an article Selling Pies Should Be Easy and you talked about not throwing up obstacles that make it difficult for our clients to buy from us. I totally agree with this however in our business there are various criteria that we need to meet that, from the customers point of view, are often seen as obstacles. To be honest, the customer feels it just isn’t... [Read more]
The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, Part XI
It’s not the job interview from hell for nothing and tonight we saw why working for SAS might really be hell. Not for him the subtleties of interviewing but the in your face, I need to know all about your personal life crash, bang, whallop approach. With no task this week, sales training tips were a little more subtle than other weeks… Maybe this approach will work? Perhaps we will we... [Read more]
The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part X
Week 10 of our Sales Apprentice and what a week! I was pretty much incensed for the whole hour. This was a sales training lesson in how not to sell and for once I would question SAS’s firing decision although I think it was fairly obvious why he did it… After a quick shuffle of the teams SAS set this week’s task, “You are going to be selling live on TV. The team that sells... [Read more]
The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part IX
630am. The phone rings, waking our Sales Apprentices from their self-contemplation. Time for some sales training lessons. SAS would like to meet you in Greenwich. “We’ve done selling. We’ve done exporting. We haven’t touched importing. Billions of pounds of goods are imported every year.” SAS wanted our teams to speak to 5 countries who will each pitch 3 products... [Read more]
The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part VII
Ring! Ring! Ring! 6am and the teams are ordered to meet at the Lloyds Building. Cars will be with them in 20 minutes. Clearly, getting ready fast is important for big business people! How do all those Sales Apprentices get ready so fast? On arrival we found out that today’s task was all about “buying”. SAS wanted to test the sales negotiation skills of the teams by pitching them into... [Read more]
The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, part V
"Now 11 remain to fight for the chance to become the Apprentice." So began this week’s episode of the hit TV show which was primarily about selling and was packed to the rafters with sales training tips for the sales superstar in waiting. This week’s task for our "wannabees" was to dabble in the art market selling photography. After picking 2 potential photographers... [Read more]
Sales superstar or sales stalker?
It’s 1028pm and I have, just two minutes ago, avoided a sales call from a health care sales person. 1028pm! On Thursday afternoon I flew out to Spain for a few days arriving late evening. I flew back late last night arriving about midnight. After 4 days eating tapas and relaxing today was a busy day catching up on emails, making sales calls and sorting out my latest sales training book…... [Read more]
Sales training tip for the day: Get up close and personal
Someone’s trying to sell me something at the moment. They met me at one of my sales training seminars and told me a bit about their products. I get that a lot as you might imagine! I said that I was pretty interested in what they had to offer. Now I don’t know about you but I’d call that a green light! They should be all over me. And they are… well sort of anyway. You... [Read more]
Under promise, over deliver… give your customers what they want even before they ask!
How many times have you rung a company with a small problem or niggle that could easily have been solved but it ends up blowing up in your face? I’m guessing quite a few times. You know the kind of situation – you have a problem with something that needs a simple resolution but the company argues the toss and you end up falling out over it. On most occasions the company usually capitulates... [Read more]
Learn the art and science of closing and win more sales
One of the questions I often get asked in sales training seminars by sales people and business owners alike is, “How do I close more sales and what closing techniques would you recommend?” In my experience, closing is one of the three most feared areas of the sales process. The other two are fear of canvassing and fear of objections. But the real question is, what is it about these... [Read more]
