Sales Tales & Motivation From Readers

Posted by Gavin Ingham on August 8, 2010 · 2 Comments 

As I write this, I am sitting on the balcony overlooking Red Wharf Bay looking forward to a “week off”. I guess, like many of you, I never really take time off work, choosing instead to combine holidaying, recharging and various condensed business activities. One of the activities I am in the middle of completing is tidying up my email inboxes and I thought I would share with you just a few of the motivational, inspirational and thought-provoking emails and messages that I have been sent recently…

First up, I loved what this reader had to say about choice…

I totally agree about the theory on famine (Previous email where I quoted a source which said, “When famine strikes, some die, some make their existing supplies last longer, then die, some find new sources of food, and some find new ways to feed themselves. Which option are we taking?”). You either choose to lay down and die, stretch what you have then lay down and die OR, as you point out, you get off your “duff” and choose to live.  Which takes a greater strength and determination but it sure beats the alternative!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

God gives us a free will for ANY situation in our lives but, he also gives us common sense and tools to do what we need to do to survive. As for me and my agents, we chose to be in sales so it is up to each individual to get out and sell to provide for their families. I have given them the knowledge of our products and the tools to use this knowledge, such as training tips, brochures, leads, etc. but they have to do the leg work.  We are so fortunate to live in a country where famine isn’t the issue, only economy and poverty!

And a note from one of my readers on how not to succeed…

I know you are interested in stories of salespeople shooting themselves in the foot…

I just answered a call from a guy representing a company called (name given), asking to speak to one of my colleagues in a very peremptory (GI: Great word!) tone, “John Smith please!!”.  Now I know for sure this colleague NEVER takes sales calls, but I thought I’d give it a go.  I called my colleague, who flatly refused to take the call, as expected.  I went back to the caller, and said I’m sorry, John is not available right now, can anyone else help you? (I still wasn’t entirely sure this was a sales call).

The caller said, “No, I’ll call John back”.  I thought it was my human duty to warn him that the call was unlikely to be any more successful next time, so I asked him what it was about.  He said, “I think that’s up to me to discuss with John, thank you very much” and hung up in my ear.  Needless to say, John has agreed never to speak to this guy if he happens to ring again, simply because he was so rude.  Why do people think this is the way to get business?  Maybe he thought I was the receptionist and could safely be insulted…

Agreed! Being rude is never a good plan of attack for salespeople! This next take is rather more useful, this time coming from a reader responding to my question, “What would you achieve if you knew you couldn’t fail?” It’s a little while ago but I loved the sentiment and kept it to share with you when the time seemed right…

Hi Gavin

I must admit to normally ’skimming’ over your mails, I will try to absorb the content a little more in the future as there is some good stuff in there.  I have just stuck the attached poster on our office wall…

I firmly believe what will initiate the recovery from recession in the UK is the attitude and the determination of small businesses.  They can respond quicker, be more focused, specialised and flexible.  They can grow rapidly -  if every member of the FSB took on 4 employees, nearly a million jobs would be created.

Thre is no point moaning about our predicament or blaming the banks and wallowing in the mire of self pity.  We do not have the option to hide under the duvet until the recession passes.  The answer for us is to put more effort in. More hours, more miles, more calls.  There is still business out there – we just have to work harder to win it.  It can get demoralising, but we have nowhere else to go. Your mail was very timely – hence the poster.

As with Travis Pastrana on his motorbike, failure for us is not an option. I am determined to succeed.

Some great tips there so I thought I’d finish off with some of my favourite motivational quotes from the movies…

“Where does the power come from to see the race to its end?  From within.”
~ ”Chariots of Fire (1981), Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson).

“You get what you settle for.”
~ Susan Sarandon as Louise Sawyer in Thelma and Louise.

“I can’t tell you any sure way to happiness. I only know that you’ve got to go out and find it for yourselves.”
~ Gene Lockhart as Dr. Seldon in Carousel.

As Woody Allen famously said, “80% of success is showing up.” An easy quote to remember but a simple quote to forget. What do you need to show up for to make this week a great week for you, your sales and your business?

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How Not To Sell High Value Products & Services

Posted by Gavin Ingham on July 26, 2010 · 2 Comments 

At the back end of the year last year I moved house and over the last few months we have been gradually putting our own touches to the house. I don’t have a lot of time (what with speaking at sales conferences and writing sales books and audios) and I don’t do things myself and I am very much of the belief that if I can pay someone to do something and I can get on with my life then that’s great. This makes me something of a salesperson’s dream because if the deal’s right I don’t shop around and I will make a decision fast… and not one based on price either.

Or so I thought…

One of the things we need are some fitted cupboards for one of the bedrooms. It’s not a room we use and it’s not the main visitor’s room so it really is a case of find a good company and get it done. We ideally wanted to support a local company so when we saw a company with signage on one of the local roundabouts we rang them and they offered to send a “salesperson” around.

A few days later Steve, I have changed his name to protect the totally inept and ridiculously incompetent, arrived at the house. He was scruffy, his clothes were tired (jeans, trainers, t-shirt) and he looked a little dirty! He had no interpersonal skills and his sole “sales pitch” was to measure the wall (‘cause you know, I can’t do that) and then tell us to go to the showroom. Every question of any kind was met with the answer, “I dunno. You’ll have to go to the showroom!”

He left.

Now, at this point, I really should have cut my losses but, determined to support a local company and interested in what the showroom sales experience would be like, we did venture there on Saturday. Not a good decision! They had no idea who we were and made no attempt to find out anything about us or tell us anything about the company or their products. They simply quoted a ridiculously high figure and then let us walk out after I pointed this out to them (to which I got no response).

Now I was telling a friend about this this morning and he said, “Well, I thought you said it wasn’t about price, it was about value?” Well, yes, I did and I do and he was right, but there wasn’t any. Value cannot just be assumed because you decide it is so. Value has to be uncovered, value has to be built up, value has to be understood and value has to be about the customer, not you.

So I thought that it would be fun to look at how not to do it, so here follow 7 Rules For How Not To Sell High Value Products & Services.

  1. Pay no attention to your personal appearance, dress and cleanliness.
  2. Build no rapport with your prospects  – business, personal or otherwise.
  3. Don’t ask any questions about what is important to your customers.
  4. Don’t bother understanding what your prospects want or need.
  5. Make no attempt to explain what is special, unique or bespoke about your services and products.
  6. Don’t follow up on enquiries and fail to follow any proven sales process.
  7. Let your customers think that you don’t care and you’re not interested.

I’d like to say that I’d give them another try in the future but I doubt they’ll be there. Whoever is in charge of their business needs to do some sales training fast.

Talking about selling on value not price is one thing, doing it is totally another.

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Sales, Not Rocket Science!

Posted by Gavin Ingham on May 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

I’m in Spain this week working on a couple of new sales books and doing a motivational sales talk at a gig in Alicante at the end of the week. As I have a place out here, I thought it made sense to mix some business with some nicer weather and some writing and as usual, I have been nothing but impressed by the work ethic of some of the street salespeople selling bags, sunglasses and trinkets. Annoying as they may be when you are eating your paella or strolling and eating your helados these teams know quite a lot about sales…

Their (very simple but effective) strategy seems to be…

  1. Find common ground with their prospect, “Hello, you English? Nice country.”
  2. Build some rapport, “Nice holiday? Lovely weather.”
  3. Understand the prospect, “What designers do you like?”
  4. Give advice, “This one look nice on you? Stylish.”
  5. Be persistent, “What about this one? Looks nice too.”
  6. Be positive, smile and be upbeat.
  7. Work hard, stay focused, keep going.
  8. Ask for the deal, “Cheap price, 30 Euros. You buy?”

Not rocket science I know but not bad advice for anyone wanting to get into sales or wanting to break out from a sales slump either!

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Sales Training Tips From Readers…

Posted by Gavin Ingham on February 3, 2010 · 2 Comments 

Although some of my readers respond on the blog, many don’t, choosing to email me instead so I thought I would share with you a few inspirational… and not so inspirational tales, stories and whoops moments from some of my readers…

In this first story, Sue shares with us how she manages to turn a client around after initially being rejected. She doesn’t use fancy sales techniques or gimmicky lines, she focuses on understanding and building trust with her prospect…

Morning Gavin!

Just wanted to share this with you…

I work for the market leader in the UK for disposable napkins.  A couple of months ago I did a telesales call, got the appointment and happily toddled off the following week to meet the gentleman.

When I arrived at the restaurant and before I had finished my brief introduction to the lady behind the bar, she turned on me and told me that she “wasn’t interested, they only used linen and her husband should’ve known better than to waste my time and hers.”

Now, before this, as I had walked through the door, I had taken in my surroundings and realized a lot of time and effort had gone into the thought and design process in the restaurant.  Also when she spoke to me I knew she was a “visual” person.  From her hair to her toes…. everything was colourful.

So, having had the appointment turned on its head in 10 seconds flat, I smiled sweetly, thanked her very much and half turned away. As I turned to say goodbye, I said, “I have to say… fantastic atmosphere in here, the design is very good,” to which she replied, “Thank you, it’s all my own work.”  “It’s lovely,” said I and I added that my company is design led too.

I was then offered a coffee, as she felt bad for wasting my time, and she gave me ten minutes.  The ten minutes turned into an hour during which she was happy to tell me what she had done to the restaurant, how long it had taken etc.  At no time during this time did I try to sell. She was so happy to look at what I could offer that when she had finished her tale I came away with a 5K order for 3 different printed napkins. I have since had two repeat orders, been for dinner and have been asked to help with her design for dressing the restaurant for Xmas!!

I now spend a few minutes in my car getting ready for my appointments and, as I walk in the door, I spend my time observing (not rehearsing over and over what I’m going to say)…..

Getting into my customers world really does help! I also realized that telling isn’t selling and listening is so important and can be so useful.

Kind regards
Sue

And the next one…

Just thought I’d share something with you that may hit home with other people. This week I went to an exhibition and I was astounded by how many people working for businesses on their stands wasted their time with this pointless exercise. It went something along the lines of…

“’Good day (they check my name badge) Spencer. How are you? Can I give you this to look at?” (offering me brochures).
“Is it relevant to me?”
“Errmm, ahhh, well what do you do?”

Now I am no expert, but shouldn’t you attempt to qualify your leads, even in an exhibition situation? I was annoyed that they didn’t even ask a couple of questions to find out what I was there for and whether they could help me, rather than just showing me what they do and hoping it fits with what I might or might not need.

I wonder how many companies would benefit from a pre-exhibition coaching session on how to interact and make the most of what can be  an expensive investment in a stand/staff etc…

Just my Friday’s ten pence Gavin.

Have a great weekend.
Spencer.

As ten pences go Spencer, a very valuable one. Far too many salespeople don’t do sufficient research, both at shows and in general, leaving themselves looking unprepared and unprofessional. It’s also, as you rightly point out, a waste of time and money. I wonder how they would prepare differently if they had to pay for the stand themselves?

Next up is Nick who has a quickie to tell us about how even the world’s best service can be met with a frown sometimes…

Hi Gavin here’s one for your Sales Tales, “Never satisfied.”

Many years ago a good customer rang up desperate for some rolls of lead (for leaded windows). What could we do? I fancied getting out of the office so I figured an hour to finish what I was doing, half an hour drive and add another half an hour because I am always late leaving. I thought I would impress my customer with a two hour delivery, not bad eh, even today?

“You couldn’t make it one hour?” was the response I got back.

Regards
Nick

You have to smile Nick. There’s no pleasing some people! And finally, one from one of my readers in the US…

Hi Gavin

This was my first newsletter and I wanted to let you know I enjoyed it very much. The only story I could think of happened the first year I was selling. I was selling janitorial services after being in operations for many years. I was on quite a roll having sold a quarter of a million in billing each month for seven months.

I had a sale lined up that was about 25,000 per month in billing. It depended on the hi -tech company visiting our offices in Worcester, MA. We did not have an office there however our company did clean a 30 story building in town and we had an office in the basement near the carpenter shop. The potential client would not have been impressed!

The Building manager had a tenant moving in on the 25th floor. The furniture was in but not the tenant. We put up a sign with our name on the entrance to the suite of offices. I met the client outside the elevator in the lobby and took them up to the 25th floor. I introduced them to our President and the V. P. of operations. We had a phone on the desk but it was not plugged in to anything. They admired the view and asked how I liked it. I rode the elevator down with them.

When I went back upstairs everything with my companies name on it was gone. It was like Mission Impossible. We got the sale which expanded to $85,000 monthly.

Charlie

Thanks Charlie, fabulous. I’m not recommending it as a strategy nor am I recommending being dishonest but you have to love your style!

Why not share your sales stories, anecdotes and tips below?

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Cold Calling Blues?

Posted by Gavin Ingham on January 28, 2010 · 4 Comments 

Just under a year ago, I bought a new car. Many of you may remember this as I mentioned a BMW dealer who showed a total lack of interest in my questions and enquiries. He effectively made my decision for me to buy from a different manufacturer. Anyway, I was reminded of this incident when I got this email from one of my readers…

We lease some cars for sales staff on contract hire.  Sales guy rings from the lease hire company and asks to be put through to me

“Hello Mr Smith.”
“Hi.”
“How’s the cars going?”
“Fine.”
“Good – give us a ring if you need anything.”
“OK . Bye.”

You would have thought with the state of the car market he could have a bit more to say!

2′nd call – this afternoon – I answer the phone – something I try and avoid.

“XYZ company, Joe Bloggs speaking.”
“Hello, can I speak to the head of marketing?”
“What’s it about?”
“Marketing.”
“No – he’s not taking sales calls.”
“Can I send an email?”
“No – Bye.”

Man – if he’d looked at our website my names there as the Director!

Idiot.

You’d like to think that these individuals were particularly bad wouldn’t you? Or maybe that they were just having a bad day. But that isn’t my experience of leasing companies… or of cold callers…

One of the biggest issues many of my sales training clients have is getting their sales teams doing the activity that they need to do to bring in enough opportunities to give them any chance of success. Helping businesses to improve motivation, increase lead generation activity and implement systems to support and improve their reach with new clients is a large part of my business but it’s not the only part…

You have to do it correctly too. Activity alone is not any good. There is no point repeating a totally ineffective cold call over and over again. As I am sure Mr. T might say, “Pity the poor busy fool!”

As a sales director, I used to get dozens of cold calls every day. Most did indeed go like this…

“Hello Gavin, how are you today?” (Ugggh!)
“Fine.”
“I’m calling from It’s All About Me Recruitment Specialists, are you looking to recruit any new salespeople at the moment?”
“No.”
“I have a really good guy I have just interviewed, can I tell you about him?”
“No.”
“Oh ok, bye.”

Pointless.

There’s no point cold calling your clients without thinking preparing first and then without bothering to find out what’s important to them. There’s no point going to networking events and then not following up correctly on the phone. There’s no point working to create a Web 2.0 presence to create new leads if you do nothing with them because you cannot structure your calls effectively.

For many companies, lead generation is something that they need to do more consistently but they also need to do it better. They need to be more effective, more structured and more professional. There is little point making more cold calls of the calibre of these unprepared and unprofessional fools above.

To be a successful cold caller you need to be focused, confident and prepared. You need the right structure and approach and you need to effectively warm your calls up so that they are relevant to your prospects. And then you need powerful questions that are all about them so that you can engage them and start a meaningful dialogue.

There is a huge difference between spam cold calling and legitimate new business calls. Which side of the equation are you on? What do your prospects and clients think of your calls?

When done well, cold calling is one of (the?) fastest and most effective route to gaining more new business leads. Critically, there are times when it would be incorrect to use cold calling and something else would be more effective… but there are also times when nothing will beat cold calling and when cold calling may be the only way to reach your target market.

One of my friends (and an ex-seminar delegate) and his team, set up 250+ appointments, closed tens of millions of business and took a major market share through the use of professionally targeted b2b cold calling in a very short period of time.

What areas of your cold calling do you need to focus on to win more sales right now? How can you improve your cold calling? How can you improve your approach to be more professional, more effective and more consistent?

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Failure For Us Is Not An Option

Posted by Gavin Ingham on December 7, 2009 · 7 Comments 

I’ve been getting a few interesting letters recently and I loved this one from Julian Athawes of Halomec in answer to my blog post last week (What would you achieve if you knew you couldn’t fail?) talking about how important attitude is for the success of a company…

Hi Gavin,

I must admit to normally ’skimming’ over your mails, I will try to absorb the content a little more in the future as there is some good stuff in there.  I have just stuck the attached poster on our office wall… (poster received but I can’t use it here as I do not have the image rights!)

Anyway,  this is what I wanted to share with you:

Right now, I should be sitting in Ashton Gate football stadium waiting for Lord Sugar to dispense some pearls of wisdom to the attendant masses, courtesy of Business Link.  At 8am this morning I told my wife that Alan Sugar is not going to recover last months dire sales figures (and those of previous months) and, that my morning would be better spent on the phone trying to win some business.

I was going to ask him what the most significant initiative he had initiated to mitigate the effects of the recession.  I won’t get to ask him that now, but his answer is probably a world away from the realities that I face running a tiny business.  Yes, we’ve done all the obvious stuff – cut overheads, reduced stock, not reduced prices, etc We share our financial predicament with our staff – warts and all.  You may say that we shouldn’t burden or scare our people to this level.  That may be the case for some organisations but, for us it works and our colleagues have responsed fantastically.

I firmly belive what will initiate the recovery from recession in the UK is the attitude and the determination of small businesses.  They can respond quicker, be more focussed, specialised and flexible.  They can grow rapidly -  if every member of the FSB took on 4 employees, nearly a million jobs would be created.

Thre is no point moaning about our predicament or blaming the banks and wallowing in the mire of self pity.  We do not have the option to hide under the duvet until the recession passes.  The answer for us is to put more effort in. More hours, more miles, more calls.  There is still business out there – we just have to work harder to win it.  It can get demoralising, but we have nowhere else to go. Your mail was very timely – hence the poster.

As with Travis Pastrana on his motorbike, failure for us is not an option. I am determined to succeed.

Thanks for that one Julian. A Sales Success CD is on the way to you with my compliments.

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