Should I Hire A Sales Coach?
I received this question the other day and I started to reply and then realized that the answer would be really useful for many of my readers…
I follow your regular updates with interest. I’m doing some work on goal setting at the moment both personally and for clients. One of the personal goals I’m toying with is the idea of hiring a personal sales mentor/coach.
I was interested to know if this was an area that you had an opinion on?
Do I have an opinion? I think all my readers will know that I must have. To try and help, I have broken the question down into several sub-questions…
Who should hire a sales coach?
- Salespeople who want to increase their skills, their sales strategies and their sales approach.
- Non-salespeople who want to ensure that their sales systems and processes are the most effective that they can be.
- Sales managers and team leaders who need to recruit, manage and motivate sales teams, both small and large.
- Sales leaders and business owners looking to develop powerful sales systems and productive sales teams.
When should I hire a sales coach?
Better question. Now, this is where I disagree with many people because many people would say, “All of the time!” Not surprisingly, most of them have coaching services to sell!
For many people, constant sales coaching loses it zing and may suffer from co-dependency issues. Personally, I think most if not all people involved with sales would benefit from having a coach or coaches at times but not all of the time. Maybe most of the time but certainly not all.
Coaching is great for salespeople looking to break through barriers, stretch for new sales goals, get unstuck orwho are taking on new projects. Here are some classic examples where a sales coach can help?
- Setting new goals, life plans and strategic direction.
- Setting out a sales and new client acquisition strategy.
- Developing new sales skills and sales processes, practising sales techniques and approaches and trying out new methods.
- Creating realistic systems and plans for achieving unrealistic goals.
- Getting out of comfort zones and motivation traps and re-motivating and re-energizing salespeople not firing on all cylinders.
Who should hire a sales coach?
- Salespeople and non-salespeople taking on new challenges where support or experience is limited.
- Team leaders, sales managers and sales leaders facing promotions, new responsibilities and new challenges.
- Anyone wanting to achieve quantum leaps in their sales results…. fast!
When should I not hire a sales coach?
- When you don’t want one.
- When you are looking for someone to sympathise with your “plight”.
- When you don’t believe in them.
- When you want them to do the work for you.
- When it’s forced upon you.
- When you don’t want to hear the truth (although this is, of course, just when you do need one!)
What are my alternatives to using a sales coach?
Sometimes there aren’t any but sometimes there are many options available and all of them may well be right at one stage or another of your sales career. Here are just a few alternatives…
- Self-learn from your own experiences.
- Read a book, listen to an audio, watch a DVD, join a sales progamme.
- Set up a Sales Champions group.
- Buddy up with a friend.
- Attend a seminar or a training course.
How do I choose my sales coach?
- Do some research, join some newsletters and watch some videos from sales coaches.
- Get referrals and advice from friends and colleagues who have used a sales coach.
- Ask some sales coaches some questions and facilitate a few conversations.
- Find someone you can trust and who has credibility and the credentials to help you.
- Make sure that they challenge you… this is not about blowing hot air up your rear end.
- Choose someone who inspires you.
- And feel free to use different coaches for specialist situations. This is not a one-size-fits-all scenario.
Will you be my sales coach Gavin?
Great question. I don’t know yet.
For many years, I have wrestled with the constant challenge of not having enough time to do everything that needs to be done. I only have limited time and only a small amount of that is allocated to very (very) committed clients who want to achieve extraordinary results in their sales and in their lives. If you have a desire to be average or, worse still, mediocre I’m not interested.
If you want want to consider coaching with me, spend some time reading the blogs and watch some of the free videos. Better still, read a few of my books, listen to an audio, watch a DVD or attend a seminar. If that juices you up and you’re up for making a quantum leap in your sales or taking your sales teams to the next level then use the contact form to tell me why you think I should work with you and we’ll take it from there…
The Business Supremacy Summit, 2010 With Doug Richard…
“Dedicated to the Exponential Growth & Success of SME’s – Spend a day Immersed in Leading Edge Growth Strategies with World Leading Entrepreneurs!!!”
Thursday 1st July – Madejski Stadium, Reading, Berkshire
Hey readers, I thought that you might be interested in this event that I am speaking at. If you read on to the end you will see how to book and please note that there is a code that will get you a discount as you have been referred by me so make sure that you use this…
From BBC’s Dragon’s Den, see Doug Richard live on stage! Sharing “The Mistakes Behind The Scenes: How to succeed when you don’t know what you’re doing!” Making a business go from “Potential to Exponential” Don’t Miss it! See Sahar Hashemi – Co-founder of Coffee Republic Live on Stage Sharing “Switched on” – How to keep the entrepreneurial spirit as you grow!
Joining Doug & Sahar on main stage are: Leading expert in Explosive Sales performance – Gavin Ingham & Reputation, Networking & Referrals Expert – Rob Brown. Gavin Ingham will be sharing his Sales Explosion Secrets Live on main stage and Rob Brown will be sharing his knowledge on “How to Build Your Reputation” – The secret of becoming a “Go To” choice in a crowded marketplace.
And that’s just for starters…
We are running exclusive hard hitting interactive workshops in the main hall all afternoon, all featuring the most current topics that leaders, business owners & entrepreneurs face when addressing & planning for business growth.
Come and spend an explosive, business changing day in the company of 100’s of other SME’s and immerse yourself in today’s most powerful business growth techniques & strategies with world leading enterpreneurs. Our experts will show you how to drive your sales and business forward, against all odds and thrive!
Covering all the essential elements for business success from Sales Explosion Secrets, Breakthrough Marketing Techniques, Motivational Leadership, Streamlining Strategies for rapid profit acceleration to “The Entrepreneurial Mindset” that will change your business life!
Quite simply this is a must attend event for anyone serious about increasing their sales & growing their business…
We look forward to welcoming you at the event.
Book now to secure your place and don’t forget to use my special discount code “GAVIN30″.
Win! Win! Win!
Book now and win the chance to dine with Sahar and Doug and our keynote speakers on the day (that’s me by the way… 
). Every ticket purchased will be entered in to a prize draw to win the chance to dine with our Special Guests on the day in the exclusive Glass Boardroom. The winner will be announced the week prior to the event!.
Off the main stage our delegates will be treated to 8 exclusive hard hitting interactive workshops in the main hall all afternoon, all featuring the most current topics, Leaders/Business Owners/Entrepreneurs face when addressing/planning for business growth.
Choose from…
- “Business Turnaround”. The complete “how-to” workshop.
- “How To Get An Extra 60 Minutes Out Of Your Already Hectic Day”. You can find another hour in your busy day and this workshop will transform the way you look at your time and what you do with it.
- “Secret Of Successful Networking”. The right strategy, the right events, the right execution, the right conversations, the right people, the right results.
- “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Jourmailst?” How to harness the power of the press to raise your business profile.
And then at 400pm you can choose from…
- “The Influential Presenter”. The insider secrets of presenting with power (this one’s with me so highly recommended!)
- “Cyberpsychology”. The answers to gaining huge profit increases using social median in “the right way”.
- “The Right Brand”. Show the world you mean business by using the simplest of marketing messages in the most powerful of ways.
- “The Flip Top Head Phenomenon.” Get inside the heads of your leadership teams and build a powerful business using psychometric profiling for serious results.
Book now to secure your place and don’t forget to use my special discount code “GAVIN30″.
Sales Survey 2009, The State Of Sales In The UK
I recently partnered Aaron Wallis sales recruitment in producing The State of Sales in the UK, a sales survey, the largest of it’s kind in the UK. Over a period of 6 weeks nearly 800 sales professionals competed the survey and the answers made interesting reading. I am going to be talking about some of the finding and what they mean for you in future blog posts but for now here are the headline findings…
- An impressive 31% of sales professionals are currently over target (28% of respondents were non-targeted) and despite what the media states only 4 in 10 sales professionals are either ‘on target’ or ‘below target’.
- Getting clients to make decisions, cold calling and sales admin/paperwork were cited as the 3 most difficult aspects of selling in 2009. (This would explain why my most popular training programmes this year are my cold calling, face to face selling and sales mindset programmes.)
- The two biggest motivators to keep sales staff (or what they’d look for in a new job) were i) opportunities for progression/career development, and ii) Their employer’s products, reputation and competitive edge.
- ‘Aggressive and Dictatorial’ were the most popular words to describe their line manager’s style though this was thankfully followed by ‘Supportive and Empowering’.
- 58% felt they did not receive enough training in their role and 36% had not received a single day of training in the last 12 months.
- The majority, 64%, would prefer the opportunity to earn £10,000 in commission than receive a straightforward £5,000 basic salary increase.
- Half would not accept a 50% pay rise if it would severely impact on their ‘work-life’ balance.
- ‘Better management and direction’ was cited as the biggest way to make a salesperson more successful (2nd was ‘Increased Marketing’, 3rd ‘Better Work/Life Balance’ and 4th ‘Training’).
- 96% of the respondents enjoy working in sales. Of the remaining 4% only 1 in 10 had planned to embark on a career in sales.
- A whopping 72% judged their career to date to be ‘7 out of 10’ or more.
- The way that the respondents personally measured success was i) ‘being respected by friends, boss and peers’ followed by ii) ‘loving relationships’ and iii) ‘peace of mind’. Status and material wealth was deemed as the major success measure by just 13% of the sales professionals surveyed.
- 70% of those that were unemployed had been recently made redundant.
- Only 11% of those in employment felt that their employer was dealing well with the financial crisis.
- Over 4 in 10 of the female respondents were Sales Managers, Sales Directors and Managing Directors, almost a two fold increase on 2007’s results. However all respondents that earned over £100K in the last 12 months were male.
- 53% had been 100% honest in every interview they have attended throughout their career.
- 44% were educated to HND or higher.
- Despite the economic situation 52% were given an increase on their 2009 targets.
- 56% of respondents felt that sales was the most influential department/division of their business.
- 65% felt that they could perform their line manager’s role more effectively than them (84% of these were male!) even though more than 8 out of 10 described their relationship with their boss as average or better!
- Surprisingly three quarters of respondents did not feel that an increase in green initiatives by their employer would have any positive increase on sales.
- More than 8 out of 10 of respondents considered themselves to regularly work under stress levels of medium or higher.
- 79% of respondents typically worked in excess of 40 hours per week with a third of the total working in excess of 50 hours.
Want to read more? Check out the full Sales Survey 2009.
Check Out This Loser!
Check out this loser…
- 1831 – Lost his job
- 1832 – Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
- 1833 – Failed in business
- 1835 – Sweetheart died
- 1836 – Had nervous breakdown
- 1838 – Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
- 1843 – Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
- 1848 – Lost re-nomination
- 1849 – Rejected for land officer position
- 1854 – Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
- 1856 – Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
- 1858 – Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
Sorry! Did I say loser?
Meet Abraham Lincoln, elected President of the United States of America 1860.
Success in sales, in business and in life means playing the long game and that means cultivating two powerful attributes – tenacity and persistence. If you keep going after everyone else gives up and goes home then you are going to be very successful.
To be successful in 2009 you need more than your fair share of tenacity and persistence. In my role as a sales motivational speaker, sales training expert and sales consultant I meet a lot of successful and inspirational people and they all say the same thing…
There are only three ways to outsell the market,
1. Out work it
2. Out live it, or
3. Out smart it.
Why not all three?
Sales Training Tip: Know Your Sales Ratios
When I ask salespeople and business owners what their ratios and conversion rates are, few know. They cannot answer simple questions like…
How many calls do you need to make to get a meeting? How many mail shots do you need to send to get your quota of inbound leads? How many meetings do you need to chair to get a qualified opportunity? What percentage of qualified opportunities will result in a deal? What is your average deal size?
You get the idea.
Only by knowing these ratios and statistics can you know how you are doing. Only by knowing these ratios can you know when they are improving (or deteriorating). Only by knowing these ratios can you reliably forecast the amount of activity (and what activity) you need to do to achieve your targets, your ambitions and your goals.
To improve your sales skills you need a benchmark of how effective they currently are. This benchmark is your ratios.
Many salespeople that I have worked with resent being asked to log and track their ratios feeling that this is “micro-management” and that they should be just left to get on with things…
They are partly right. It shouldn’t be me encouraging them to keep these statistics – they should want to keep them. They should be tracking, studying and leveraging these figures and statistics themselves to ensure that they are on track for the sales results that they crave. They should know them inside out.
Taken from Real World Sales Skills.
Repetition Is The Mother Of All Skill If You Want Sales Success
“Repetition is the mother of all skill.”
~ Tony Robbins, author of Unlimited Power
In sales seminars and sales training programmes I often talk about the difference between sales skills and sales techniques…
Sales techniques are something external to you, they are something that you hear or that you know. Sales skills are something that you own, they are yours through hard work and practise. And, what’s more, they won’t abandon you in even the toughest of markets.
When I speak at sales conferences many salespeople sit back, cross their arms and ask for “the advanced stuff”. They tell their boss that they don’t need sales training because they already know it, they’ve heard it all before…
Take open questions as an example. Any salesperson with more than about 5 minutes selling experience knows what an open question is – a question that requires more than a “yes” or “no” answer. We all know that open questions start with the words what, where, when, why, how, who which. But how many salespeople put undue sales pressure onto their clients by asking (self-centred) closed questions when they should be asking (well constructed) open questions?
“Most salespeople” is the correct answer.
The ability to ask great questions is one of the critical skills for being a sales superstar yet most salespeople fair badly at best in this area.
Think back to the first time you were taught about open questions. Did you understand it? I’m guessing that you did. Let’s face it, it really isn’t that complicated is it? Most salespeople hear it, think that it makes sense and move on. They hear it, they acknowledge it but they never practise it. They get it intellectually but because they never practised it, it never becomes a skill for them. It never becomes something that they own.
Put under pressure in a sales meeting or in a cold call, and with the adrenaline flowing, they revert to type asking controlling closed questions and “forgetting” to ask carefully constructed open ones.
As Robbins says, “Repetition is the mother of all skill.”
- If you want to be a great golfer you need to practise your swing, over and over.
- If you want to be a great pianist you need to practise your scales, over and over.
- If you want to be a great at anything you need to practise it, over and over.
- If you want to be a great salesperson you need to practise your sales skills, over and over.
If you are a salesperson and you want to outsell your competition and win more clients fast, you need to create an ongoing sales development programme for yourself that includes regular practise of all of the sales training basics.
Don’t wait for your boss to put you on a sales training programme. Don’t wait for your sales results to fall off a cliff. Don’t wait until it’s nearly too late to start. Start now and make regular sales training practise of your selling skills part of your daily habits. You’ll be amazed what you can achieve from a mere 15 minutes a day practising your basic sales skills.
If you’re a sales manager, sales leader or business owner then you need to think about how you can help your sales team to practise their core sales skills regularly. One-off training is not enough by itself. You need to create ongoing sessions and exercises for them to participate in, both individually and as a team. One company I know bought several copies of my Objection handling book Objections! Objections! Objections! and then “drilled” the answers in sales meetings. They added £1 million to their bottom line.
Not convinced it’s worth the effort? Not convinced you can get the same results? not convinced that you buy into this whole practise argument? What would Tiger Woods, David Beckham and Johnny Wilkinson tell you to do?
I rest my case.
The UK Sales Survey 2009
In the complex and tough markets of 2009 it is essential that every employer knows what motivates their sales teams and salespeople in general. For salespeople, it is critical that you know what motivates you. To help with this I have partnered with recruitment company Aaron Wallis to sponsor the 2009 Sales Survey.
We are aiming to get responses from over 1000 sales professionals thus giving us a true and accurate snapshot of what it is really like to work in sales in 2009. The survey is being widely promoted in the media and I will be publishing the results and anything that we can learn or use from them. This research will also be featuring in the autumn / winter edition of the ISMM’s Winning Edge magazine.
The results will provide the data for the report ‘The State of the UK Sales Industry, 2009’ and is applicable to anyone in a sales led role. The survey is totally anonymous and the the results will be made available free of charge to download to everyone that takes part and will be published on GavinIngham.com, 2009 Sales Survey and also www.aaronwallis.co.uk.
The survey consists of just over 60 questions and will take around ten to twelve minutes to complete. The questions are designed to be a mixture of work related and life related questions. We hope that you enjoy completing it.
To get you thinking, here are some interesting results from the 2007 survey…
- Almost 50% of respondents said they’d lied at interview, mostly about why they left their last job and about their salary.
- Only 23% of female respondents were in senior management jobs compared to 46% of men.
- 54% of female respondents earned over £25k. 81% of male respondents earned over 25k.
- 32% of respondents said they’d had no training in the previous year.
- The number one top priority in any new job was the opportunity to grow and develop.
- Female respondents were twice as likely to be satisfied with their career/job.
- 43% didn’t take their full holiday entitlement.
- Being respected was the single biggest driver for all respondents – far more than money.
- 60% thought they could do their boss’s job better!
Why not have your say in the 2009 survey now? I’ve already had mine! As a ‘thank you’ for completing the survey you have the opportunity to win an ‘ultimate experience’. This is a choice of over 100 experiences ranging from a 30 minute ‘Tiger Moth’ flight to an overnight golf break for two to a racing experience in a Lamborghini.
You can take the 2009 Sales Survey here now and you can rest assured that I will be using the outputs to ensure that my sales training programmes, sales seminars and sales products stay ahead of the game and keep giving you the motivation and the strategies that you require to keep on selling with passion.
The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Week 12, The Final
The final of the Apprentice. Cool, professional Kate versus passionate, entrepreneurial Yasmina. Their brief, design and pitch a new brand of chocolate. Sir Alan said they were his best candidates ever and that it was his hardest decision yet. Either could have won. Yasmina did.
So that done (!), I thought I would sum up some of the core sales training lessons from this year’s Sales Apprentice…
On sales motivation and mindset…
- Top sales performers perform, they don’t talk about performing. Sales is not about what you say you’re going to deliver. Sales is all about what you actually do deliver.
- Sales success is all about action. Success in sales does not come to those who watch the game. Success in sales comes to those who pick up the ball and play their hearts out, right the way to the final whistle.
- Maintain your focus because sales superstars are focused. They know what they want. They work out how to get it. And they take action to achieve it.
- Sales success is about taking responsibility – responsibility for yourself, your sales activities and your sales results.
- Sales success is directly related to effort.
On prospecting…
- Know your client, know your client, k-n-o-w your client.
- Set objectives for all sales activities and prospecting calls.
- Get proactive and get your prospecting done. Procrastination and lethargy are the enemy of successful new business winners.
- Get yourself in the right mental state for cold calling. Attitude is your ability to access your skills.
- Know where to expend your energy. Working smarter is the route to success.
- Know your product. Know your product. Know your product.
On selling…
- Under promise and over deliver. Delivering on your promises is essential in any business.
- Develop trust and credibility if you want top class client relationships.
- Always give 100%. Nothing short of 100% if good enough if you want to be a sales superstar.
- When negotiating, sound like you believe in what you’re saying and plan your negotiation tactics and strategies.
- Sell on value and not price.
- Maximize the impact and effectiveness of your sales activities.
- Understand your clients, their markets and their needs. Your sales presentations need to be matched and tailored to suit their wants and needs and not just your own.
- Ask better questions. Listen harder. Seek to fully understand your clients.
- Know that people buy on emotion and justify with logic.
On presenting…
- To make powerful and persuasive sales presentations you need to know your stuff, you need to know what you’re presenting, you need a solid and proven structure.
- Know your audience. Know your audience. Know your audience.
- Do your preparation and planning.
- Have a call to action. People need an incentive and encouragement to buy now.
- Practise. Practise. Practise.
- Give 100% and be yourself.
On sales leadership…
- Watch out for sales terrorists in your business who focus everyone on the negative and undermine your business. In today’s turbulent economy you cannot afford to have negativity like this in your teams.
- Utilize the skills of your team effectively. Different people have different strengths and different weaknesses and using these to best advantage is key.
- Be approachable and personable so that your team will communicate with you, confide in and support you.
- Encourage involvement and participation and create team spirit.
- Take responsibility and make decisions.
- Judge the reality of a situation not just what you believe it to be.
- Learn to delegate. Being a great leader is not about being able to do everything yourself.
- Get the right salespeople into your business to build high performance sales teams and get great sales results.
So that’s it for another year. What did you learn and what are you going to do differently to get the sales results that you want?
The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Week 11, The Interviews
So I guess the biggest question tonight was which, if any, of the interviewers would you want to be interviewed by? Indeed, if their behaviour tonight was representative of their general leadership styles in the workplace which of them would you actually want to work for?
But, real or not, representative of their day-to-day style or not, this was prime time TV and they had to make a spectacle of it. What’s more, of course, the whole premise of interviewing at the end of the hiring process is ludicrous; many of the issues that are discovered at this late stage should have been weeded out at first interview stage… preferably on the phone thus saving you valuable time and money.
Not many sales training tips tonight but plenty of ideas on how and how not to hire yourself a high performance sales team. And not many surprises with the outcome of tonight’s show either…
The four interviewers this year were Claude Litner, Sir Alan’s former “global trouble-shooter”; Karren Brady, the managing director of Birmingham City Football Club; Bordan Tkachuk, the chief executive of the computer and IT firm Viglen, one of Sir Alan’s companies; and Alan Watts, hot-shot city litigator who acted for Sir Alan in his successful proceedings against the Daily Mail for libel.
Their mission, apparently, break through the bragging and the bluster and get to the truth.
Perhaps the interviewing wasn’t as outrageous as last year but, none the less, if you were setting up a business and you had never recruited anyone before and you chose to adopt some of these interviewing approaches for finding the right salespeople for your business you could very quickly land yourself in very hot water indeed. Headed by Claude Litner, this was a master-class in bullying your interviewee by being overly personal, “I wonder if you’re delusional”, I’ve read your CV… it’s fair to say that they’re exceptional, exceptionally bad” , “You’re talking nonsense, you’re talking nonsense aren’t you”, “Don’t be daft”, “You’re little miss perfect aren’t you”, “You seem a little immature”…
But at least this was balanced out by Karen, in particular, who demonstrated some powerful interviewing skills, building rapport, listening to her interviewees and asking strong developmental questions to really find out what the candidates had to say. She wanted to find out what made the candidates tick and from what we saw did a good job of it.
Sales leadership tip: Getting the right salespeople into your business is essential if you want to build high performance sales teams and get great sales results. Yes, it’s important that you challenge individuals under interview but it is also essential that you get them talking and really find out what drives them and makes them tick. Behaving like Sir Alan’s attack dog is no way to recruit great salespeople as it simply backs them into a corner allowing you to see little more than how they behave when someone threatens them.
Here are 5 top tips for recruiting sales superstars by getting the best out of sales interviewees…
- Do your preparation. Develop a standard set of questions.
- Listen and ask developmental questions.
- Ask evidence based questions because anyone can talk theory. You need to understand what they have actually done not what they say they can do.
- Don’t divulge too much about your company at first. Find out what they know.
- Be tough and challenging but not rude. Do not personalize it.
What did we learn about the apprentices from these interviews?
Kate prefers to work with men. James looked like he was going to cry most of the time. Lorraine was not confident about her CV and “accidentally” added an extra year onto her current job to pad it out. Yasmina had exaggerated the turnover and the profit of her current business. Debra was accused of being hated and swearing at work and said that she had never had so much negative feedback in a day.
In the board room…
“James I have taken on board what you said, there is nothing wrong with being friendly… I think you’re a corporate man… that don’t exist in my business, with regret you’re fired.”
And James was gone and we were left with 4 girls…
“Lorraine. You think you’re good at sales yeah?… You can’t keep bleating about that hard upbringing all the time… you had altercations with people… (she said she had learnt from the show)… Lorraine you might have to take that with you now, I have to balance what is suitable for my organization so I am going to have to say to you, you’re fired…”
And there were three…
“Kate. You’re in the final.”
So the last place was between Debra and Yasmina. “If I tell you that there is nothing between you. It is a very, very, seriously tough decision that I have to make… Debra you should be proud of yourself. I’ve made my decision and I wish you the very, very best of luck and I know you’re going to be very successful in the future. Debra you’re fired. You keep in touch.”
So we were left with Kate and Yasmina, the two you could have picked for the final 6 weeks ago. Who do you think will win? Roll on Sunday.
Sales interview tips: If you’re currently interviewing for a new sales role, here are 6 quick tips for interview success…
- Do your research.
- Identify the key skills you think your interviewer will need and think of specific examples where you have demonstrated these skills.
- Take evidence of your results with you.
- Know your figures.
- Prepare some questions.
- Close Close Close.
For more tips on succesful interviewing read this Sales Interview Techniques article now.
The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part X
If you spent tonight watching Manchester United play Barcelona in the Champions League then the good news is that you didn’t miss a lot in the way of sales training and business tips on tonight’s Apprentice. What you did miss however was Sir Alan sacking someone that, based upon your emails to me, many of you had thought would make the final. I agreed with Sir Alan’s decision but more of that later…
Tonight’s task was to select products to sell live on a TV shopping channel. The team that sold the most would win. A task like this is all about picking the right products for your target audience and then selling them effectively. How would they fare?
On team Ignite, Howard volunteered to project manage Lorraine and Kate whilst over on team Empire, Yasmina volunteered to project manage James and Debra. Debra also wanted to be project manager and agreed to Yasmina leading the team somewhat ungraciously, “For me, I am happy to be project manager every week,” she stated. Err, yes Debra, but that’s really not what it’s about though is it?
Both teams split in two to select products which the other members of their team would have to sell on TV the next day. All were treated to “sales presentations” on various products which they could choose from. They may have asked but, if they did, we never heard one question or one comment on target markets and audiences…
Sales training tip: Much as knowing what the products do is important, so is knowing who the audience are and what they buy. Me, I would have spent rather more time asking questions. Who are the audience? What do they like? What do they normally buy? How many did this product sell last time? When was it last on the channel? What have they bought that’s similar? How did they sell? How do the prices compare? How price conscious are they? What compels them to buy now? Etc etc.
Choices were made. Kate selected a hideous leather jacket with silver or gold leaves on and a healthy chip pan for Howard and Lorraine to sell. Howard and Lorraine selected a rather bizarre pet craft kit and a mini electronic, air guitar for Kate to sell.
Over on the other team, James and Yasmina selected a leaf grabbing contraption and a polo-neck, scarf type piece of clothing for Debra to sell and she in turn selected a cheap remote control car and a pack of elasticated hairclips for them.
Notably, James, Yasmina and Debra did not have a product priced over £29.99 whilst Kate, Lorraine and Howard had two approaching £150. Would this make winning hard for Yasmina and her team or would their cheap “pile them high, sell them cheap” approach work?
On the TV…
James was cheesy, “If you’re not first with this, you’ll be last with this”, he quipped, “Stop spying and start buying.” Debra meanwhile looked slick but did claim the line of the week, “This is the answer to the scarf,” she stated confidently. What was the question again Debra?
Over on the other team, Howard and Lorraine looked uncomfortable working together. Selling the chip pan they waxed lyrical about the chips but said little about how to buy the product. Kate looked like she was enjoying herself selling the air guitar, perhaps a little too much.
Sales training tip: Every sales message needs a call to action. People need an incentive and encouragement to buy now. They need to know when to call, why they should call now, the number to call, the numbers that are selling, the number of people hanging on the line etc etc.
In the board room…
Empire had sold £1541.88. Ignite £1376.73.
A win for Yasmina and her team. Apparently Debra had been “exceptional” according to the TV channel representatives. Howard and his team had failed to win despite their higher priced products. Neither the leather jacket nor the fryer had sold to the expectation levels of the channel.
During the conversations that followed it became clear that both Howard and Kate blamed Lorraine. Lorraine thought Howard should go due to being over cautious. In private, Nick vociferously stood up for Lorraine to Sir Alan, “She is so often right.”
In their defence…
Howard said that he is a great communicator and works well in teams. Nick told him that he lacked ambition and is not brave. Lorraine said she has natural business acumen. Sir Alan asked why she wanted to work for him then? Kate said she has been a strong team player. Sir Alan said that one of them is “not going to be very happy.”
“Kate. I think you stepped back in my eyes in this last week. You say you’re not a one trick pony… but you might be… Howard you’re a steady Eddie… Lorraine you speak a good game, your age has got nothing to do with it… I’ve noticed a couple of times that you seem to make your mind up afterwards and I ‘aint got time for people like that either… This is a very difficult decision because you three people have come a long way in this process… Howard, you’re fired.”
An interesting decision and one I agreed with. Howard has never really stepped up. We are one week from the final and he is still a figure in the background. Worse, he has twice been present when bad decisions have been made and has seemingly done and said nothing to contradict the bad decisions being made. But he is a nice guy and eminently enmployable…
Howard in the cab, “I’m gutted. Really gutted…. If Sir Alan thinks I am risk adverse then ok I will take on board the feedback.”
So…
Kate, Lorraine, Debra, Yasmina and James remain to face the wrath of the interviewers from hell next week. Who will survive the ridiculous, unrealistic, un-PC, verbal attacks of Sir Alan’s attack dogs? Who do you want to see in the final?
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