Sales Training Motivational Speaker | Gavin Ingham» leadership

The Sales Apprentice 2011: Sales Training & Business Development Tips From The Hit TV Show, Week 6

Gavin Ingham — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:20:23 +0000

Week 6 and 10 remain still trying to win The Sales Apprentice and a “50/50 partnership with the nation’s toughest investor”… well the most belligerent and bellicose anyway. This week’s task was in junk removal with the objective being to collect, dispose of responsibly and make money from junk.

After a quick reshuffle the team’s elected their team leaders: Zoe for team Venture and Helen, who had just been “shuffled”, for team Logic. In this task there were two ways to make money: 1) charging to collect waste and 2) selling on valuable items. There were also two ways to spend money: 1) buying valuable waste and 2) paying to dispose of waste. Whilst there was a small sales element to this task much of the success of it lay in project management, time management, logistics and knowledge of what could be sold and at what price and how easily.

For the teams this week there were two main angles…

Bidding on and hopefully winning one or both of the two commercial projects that Lord Sugar had set up meetings for &
Securing their own business.

In both of these the two teams decided to take different approaches…

Helen’s team Logic decided to offer no fee collection on the commercial business hoping to be able to sell on for more than their disposal costs whilst Zoe’s team tried to charge for the removal of goods and sell on at profit. In chasing their own business, Zoe’s team decided to go house to house whereas Helen’s team went for café owners.

With the cameras cutting about it was difficult to tell which approach was going to be the stronger and the final results of £706 versus £712 profit would do little to answer this question….

Sales training & business tip: Planning, preparation and knowledge are essential keys to success in business. Far too many people rush in without truly understanding what they’re doing and how they are going to make money.

In this task, winning Lord Alan’s “opportunities” seemed critical yet knowing what price was worth it and what price wasn’t could have proven to be critical. In my role as a sales motivational speaker I meet a lot of salespeople, business owners and entrepreneurs. Most of them work hard, really hard… but the ones who succeeed are the ones who know what, where and how they should spend their time. I meet people every week who “compete” to win business that they should have walked away from only for it to become the proverbial millstone around their necks.

At the end of day 1, Zoe was distraught at finding out that she had not won either of the two contracts laid on by Lord Alan. Tears came to her eyes and Glen stepped in to tell her that they could still turn it round, chin up. She lifted her chin a little but not her flat tones… that, would be asking too much.

Sales training & sales management tip: Team motivation can start with a simple gee-up talk. Being there for your team when they need you with a positive word of encouragement is sometimes all that it takes to help someone reengage with their personal motivation. Many business leaders and managers undervalue and underuse the power of a simple “thank you” or “well done” or even the positive effects of just listening.

The teams continued to rush around… I could bore you to death with how Edna tried to renegotiate a deal after the event (don’t do it!) and how Jim was had by an even sharper cookie than him or how the teams bought, sold and shifted junk but I’ll settle for saying…

Stick to your commitments.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
Don’t celebrate doing a deal by high-fiving in front of your clients.
Make sure your team have a strategy.

In the Boardroom…

Zoe and Venture had made £1045 and spent £339 making a profit of £706.
Helen and Logic had made £1090 and spent £378 making a profit of £712.

They don’t come much closer than that but Logic weren’t going to let the scantily clad nature of their victory stop them hitching their skirts and doing a victory jig before going off to a spa.

Back in the Boardroom…

Zoe decided to bring back Edna and Suzy. None of these three are in my top 4 (and are all infact in my bottom 4) so there wasn’t going to be a shock tonight…

Lord Sugar liked Zoe’s honesty in taking the blame for the first day but he doesn’t really do forgiveness does he so her card is seriously marked? Lord Sugar empathised with Suzy for being young but said she should be more resilient…

“Edna, it says on your CV that you have a proven ability to produce highly original ideas,” quipped Lord Alan. “I don’t see nothing like pants man here. Now that was a workable idea.”

“I see your point Lord Alan but I am a walking qualification, I train HR people, I coach CEOs…” (Lord Al smirked) “There was this one guy, who runs a business with £5 billion. I made him. He was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met him, I picked him out, I turned him around, I turned him into someone new and now 5 years later he has the world at his feet…”

Nick turned to Alan, “Do you need training Al?”

“Na, I don’t think so. What’s that? And don’t call me Al.”

“I have 3 degrees, a BSC, A Masters and an MBA…”

“I’m sorry Edna, I can’t work with you. Bye.”

And Edna was fired.

Sales training tip: Understanding people is critical if you want to succeed in sales. Research is critical if you want to succeed in sales. You can have all of the qualifications in the world but if you are unaware that your communications are going adrift and that you are not connecting with people in the way that you would like to, then you are going to struggle to get ahead…

What Is Brainstorming?

Gavin Ingham — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:48:11 +0000

What is brainstorming? What does it mean to you? What does it actually mean? Who uses it? And why should you care? Let’s start off with a Dictionary.com definition shall we…

Brain•storm•ing
Spelled[breyn-stawr-ming]
–noun
a conference technique of solving specific problems, amassing information, stimulating creative thinking, developing new ideas, etc., by unrestrained and spontaneous participation in discussion.

Origin: 1955–60

OK. So, and just incase you haven’t got it, brainstorming is a way of coming up with ideas, the whole point of which is to throw everything out there so that you can chew on it and see what you come up with.

Some of the things you come up with will be nonsense (unrestrained and spontaneous). Some will be great. Some will be rubbish. And some might be useable somewhere at some point… or not.

Brainstorming is a fantastic technique, not only for the ideas and concepts that it throws up but also for the way it can and should involve everyone (participation). Brainstorming is a “safe” task to perform for everyone involved because you can do and say no wrong.

Apparently, no-one bothered to tell Lord Sugar, Nick Hewer and Karen Brady this and tonight, and not for the first time, they introduced “blame culture” to brainstorming on the TV show The Apprentice (when one of the contestants was blamed for the failure of a task due to coming up with the idea in a brainstorming session).

As a business leader, as an entrepreneur and as a salesperson you have to harness the power of your team and their ideas… without blame and without censure. Your team need to feel that they can say anything, that they will be heard, that their participation will be valued and that they will not be disciplined for saying the wrong things.

And then they will get involved. They will share their ideas, the good and the bad. Censure them and they will shut up and then you will get nothing from them.

Once you have ideas, it’s down to you to work out which ideas work, which don’t, develop the right ones, lose the bad ones, do due diligence and take the right decisions and actions.

Rant over.

The Sales Apprentice 2009: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part V

Gavin Ingham — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:21:47 +0000

This week on the Sales Apprentice the task was for our two intrepid teams to come up with a brand identity for a new product – Sir Alan’s new breakfast cereal concoction. He wanted them to name it, create a brand, think up an identity and produce an advertisement to pitch it to an agency. The team with the best campaign would be the winner.

Leading Ignite this week was marketing consultant Kimberly and leading Empire was licensing development manager Kate.

From the start of the task the two teams could not have been more different – Empire seemed to run smoothly and harmoniously whilst on Ignite Kimberly, Lorraine and Philip picked up where they left off last week with bickering and arguing appearing more important than the task in hand.

Kate’s team came up with the idea of calling their cereal Treasure Flakes and used a quirky little cartoon, parrot pirate called Captain Squawk. Ben, clearly taking on all the “action” tasks this series, dressed up as the parrot and did his bit for the advert.

Kimberly’s team meanwhile were struggling to have an idea of any credence and eventually settled for an off-the wall campaign using a cartoon character called Pants Man. This was possibly the maddest idea that any apprentice has ever come up with and was the brain child of Philip who steam rolled it through by sheer force of will. Check out this incomprehensible nonsense from Mona who clearly had no more idea what the messages was than I did, “…when you eat our serial you won’t dress up like Pants Man because you’re not pants man and only Pants Man can wear his pants over his clothes”. What?

To top it all, the box of cereal they had designed was puke green and was only illustrated on the front facia, the others being left blank because they “ran out of time”. Kimberly was uninspiring, uninvolved and unworthy of the role of project manager.

She wasn’t supportive either. When Mona was practising her pitch Kimberly was full of criticism and when asked why she didn’t make the pitch herself (as she was so experienced) she said that she did not have the time to prepare that late in the day. Later on, when challenged by Sir Alan on this point, she admitted that she was not “completely comfortable in front of an audience”. On the evidence we saw, I am not sure quite what she would be comfortable doing.

She did however score one of the best lines of the show when she was “apologizing” to Mona for her lack of support which she managed to do without taking any responsibility for her apology and blaming Mona again at the same time, “I’m sorry you’ve misinterpreted my body language.” Fabulous – she has to go.

After the presentations and in the board room Kimberly’s team were relatively supportive of her with the exception of Lorraine who seemed determined to rub Sir Alan up the wrong way by distancing herself from the team and the project and coming across as genuinely awkward. Even Sir Alan, clearly bored with her, had to hold up his hand and say, “Shhh! I’m getting vibes from you.”

Kate’s Empire team had obviously enjoyed working for her and if there was anything to be learnt from tonight’s show it would be about the importance of having the right personality and attitude to be a leader. Kate is beginning to look like a possible contender. Even Captain Squawk acknowledged she was good a project manager and the team really did seem to have worked well as a team.

Not surprisingly, Kate and Empire were safe leaving Kimberly and Ignite to face the music…

“This is total garbage… how you think you can possibly believe you can have an advertising campaign based around pants… this is total rubbish”, yelled Sir Alan.

Kimberly elected to bring back Lorraine and Philip.

In her defence Kimberly claimed, “I am not a creative, I manage creatives.” Hmmm, a definite case of delusions of grandeur. At no stage did she appear to manage anything, she couldn’t even manage a side or back illustration onto the packet, she didn’t manage Philip and she didn’t manage to win.

That said, I’d have cut my losses and let both girls go. Sir Alan had this to say, “Lorraine I’ve listened to you and I’m trying to weigh up in my mind whether you are responsible because you are disruptive… Kimberly you have a marketing background, you should really have walked this thing… Philip, you know, very cock sure people that bulldoze ideas through is not what I am looking for… I have to weigh up who I am going to forgive… Kimberly you remind me of the final scene from the Wizard of Oz you look very impressive but in my mind behind the curtains there is nothing there.”

And Kimberly was gone.

So not many sales training tips tonight but some examples of leadership – from Kimberly how not to do it and from Kate on how to do it. Here are just a few…

Be approachable and personable so that your team will communicate with you, confide in and support you.
Despite their competitive, cut-throat, egotistical personalities, Kate’s personality and approach really did seem to ignite Empire.

Encourage involvement and participation.
Kate encouraged discussion and equality from the off. She delegated well and got the best out of her team.

Create team spirit.
By involving all and creating one common direction, Kate crafted a team which pulled together, took responsibility and got results.

Take responsibility and make decisions.
Kate got her team moving forwards whilst Kimberly flannelled around and failed to make decisions leaving her floundering team with too much time on their hands to fight petty arguments.

So that’s it for another week. What did you think of tonight’s show? Who do you think is looking good? Who has to go soon?

Achieve Your Goals From ‘Motivate People’ By Motivational Speaker Gavin Ingham

Gavin Ingham — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:55:30 +0000

One subject seems to have dominated my week this week and that’s goal setting and motivating using goals. As a sales expert and motivational speaker this is something that comes up quite often so I thought I would share with you one of the techniques from my book Motivate People which was published by Dorling Kindersley last year…

Using imagery is an important and often forgotten part of successful goal setting. By clearly visualizing, your brain will be able to “experience” the achievement of your goals prior to your having achieved them. Repeat this exercise often.

Pick a goal from one area of your life. Picture it in detail.
Imagine stepping into the “you” in the picture and actually experiencing your achievement of that goal. Notice how it feels, what you see, hear, and think. Notice how others are treating you.
Look into the future beyond your achievement of the goal. How does achieving this goal benefit all areas of your life?
Look back at the past and your route to achieving your goal. Note your successes and the obstacles you overcame. Notice how different they are now that you have overcome them. Appreciate how you feel about your achievements.
Imagine yourself walking backwards from your future achievement to the present. Notice what resources you needed and what you learnt from specific steps you took to help you along the way.
From the present look forwards to your goal and appreciate the journey. Map out key stages of the journey and the resources you require right now.

Motivate People will help you to develop skills, realise your full potential and make your life work.

Discover the core attitudes and skills to motivate yourself and others, and ensure your team delivers results.
Practical techniques, effective tips, five-minute fixes and case studies equip you to success in the real world.
Set your goals and check your progress with self-assessment exercises.

If you want to get hold of copy of this useful little book you do so in the UK here Motivate Peoople UK book or in the US here Motivate People US book.