Sales Training Motivational Speaker | Gavin Ingham» Sales skills

Sales, Not Rocket Science!

Gavin Ingham — Tue, 04 May 2010 14:31:41 +0000

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…

Find common ground with their prospect, “Hello, you English? Nice country.”
Build some rapport, “Nice holiday? Lovely weather.”
Understand the prospect, “What designers do you like?”
Give advice, “This one look nice on you? Stylish.”
Be persistent, “What about this one? Looks nice too.”
Be positive, smile and be upbeat.
Work hard, stay focused, keep going.
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!

Cold Calling Blues?

Gavin Ingham — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:30:40 +0000

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?

Repetition Is The Mother Of All Skill If You Want Sales Success

Gavin Ingham — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:47:20 +0000

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

Gavin Ingham — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:53:23 +0000

“For me, making money is better than sex!”

And so the first of the “brightest and the best” from all over the UK opened the 2009 UK Apprentice. No wonder our economy is in such a state…

Second up, some open necked girl (Anita – see later), with her nose stuck in the air, walking through the tube, “I am outstanding. It’s a given.” Oh dear, why I am watching this compulsive car crash TV again? Will we get any outstanding business talent this year or is it another year where the best we have to look forward to are ego maniac statements, reverse pterodactyl impressions and momentous business cock ups?

Phillip in Geordie accent, “You don’t have to make friends on the way up when you’re not coming back down.” Sound like famous last words to me.

Chosen from thousands of applicants, these are the 16 that some researcher with not a clue about real business at the BBC has chosen, more than likely for our viewing pleasure rather than their business acumen. But surely the contestants know that? Maybe not, listening to them…

Cliche after cliché rolls from their mouths (e.g. “In business you play to win”) and then the biggest cliché of the lot, Sir Alan, is back on our screens, “You didn’t sell, you didn’t sell and you didn’t sell” he barks, pointing his finger at some poor loser in some future episode. “First prize you get to work for me, second prize don’t exist”, he continues.

Will there be sales training and business lessons to be learned this year? Will we get sales training tips and strategies from the show? Probably not from the Apprentices themselves, that’s for sure! But from our analysis, I am sure we will.

Sitting outside the board room for the first time, the Apprentices are silent, perhaps for the last time in twelve weeks. Cue Sir Alan…

“Good morning ladies and gentleman. Welcome to my board room.” Sir Alan introduces himself to the group and tells them that one of the boys group has already “bottled it” and has not shown up for the programme. That’s the kind of decision that I am sure many of these Apprenti might look back on in years to come and wish that they’d made!

“I know the words to Candle in the Wind; don’t make me Elton John” quips Sir Alan. “I’m as hard to play as a Stradivarius and you lot are as easy to play as bongo drums.” More David Brent than big business man this year then. I reckon Sir Alan has been spending his winter nights between last year and this thinking these sayings up. “Trust me, you’re going to be under extreme pressure” he says.

And then, the first task…

“I started my business from nothing… I always dirtied my hands… This first task is all about clean… You go out there and you clean things… The team that comes back here with the highest profit wins.” As usual, first task is split up girls versus boys with silver fox Nick stalking (?) the girls and Margaret, the boys. “Don’t underestimate these two, they’re dead sharp” says Sir Alan, pushing his puppet master buttons for them to both nod in agreement. Sharp in this company maybe…

On the way to the first task, the boys introduce themselves to each other in the car. Some cocky teacher says, in his smooth Rochdale accent, that he loves the sound of his own voice. I just hope that our government didn’t see fit to let this clown take leave with permission to go back when he’s failed…

“I look the part, I talk posh and I look posh” he continues… Err right, deluded as well then. It’s shaping up to be even more X-Factor this year. But I do know a school for him, Waterloo Road anyone?

Meanwhile, the girls are bigging themselves up…

“I am a Commercial Development & Strategy Manager but I’m actually a trained lawyer” nods one girl (Anita again), imperiously. And there, my friends, is the problem with our economy…

Their first job is to come up with a team name and the American is the first to start talking about marketing and brand names. When will these muppets realize that this is all about selling. They are not building a lasting brand. They will be doing things for one day. No-one cares what the name of the company is that cleans their car or their shoes if they are never going to see them again. Ideas above their station as my mother used to say whenever my sister or I got above ourselves. Who cares what your stupid teams are called?

Despite thinking it important they showed the originality of a very uncreative person without a creative bone in their body…

Strike and Carpe Diem suggested the boys… original then. Empire suggested another, jingoistically. The others agreed and that’s was their name. Ignite, decided the girls. Oh dear.

Howard Ebison is the boy’s manager. “What is our objective?” he asks. Err, make money I think Howard. Meanwhile the girls are struggling to elect a leader but eventually pick Mona.

Sales training thoughts: This is a straight forward sales task and they have one day only. The key to it is to define your market fast, locate it fast and get working fast. It does not get more simple than this…

But as usual both teams get bogged down in talking about what they’re going to do and making a hash of ordering supplies. The problem with the Apprenti is that they all like talking about how good they are but none of them actually want to do very much…

15 ego maniacs + 1 task = MAYHEM

Half of the boys arrive at a mini-cab office to pitch to clean some cars that are going to the auction house. The boys offer £17 per unit and the manager says he is already paying £17.50 so they are not doing him any great favours but they can have the job if they will do it for £15. “Will you do £16?” asks one of the boys and the client agrees then quickly sneaking in a last minute concession, “We will only pay for the cars that we’re happy with…”

It’s now 1130am and the girls arrive at a limousine company in West London. Yasmina, a finance director, heads up to lead the negotiations. £300 she offers confidently for cleaning 3 stretch Hummers only to be informed that the prospect is currently paying only £60 for all three. “We’re here right now, we’re ready to go, we want to tie the deal and get on with this” says one of the girls adding that they’re not desperate. Au contraire, I think you are; you’ve driven out there, you have nothing else planned and if this client does not say “Yeah” you have wasted so much time.

Meanwhile, the other girls are looking at classic cars in North London and have agreed to clean the cars for £10 per car. Eventually the girls at the other venue agree a price of £40 per Hummer and Mona says, “It’s done by women not stinky men”… (Ed: !”£$&^£*&!) “I didn’t want him to think we were desperate” she said. Bit late when you’re all standing there with the sponges in your hands Mona.

130pm and Howard and the boys with him are polishing shoes at St. Pancras station. The other boys are having their cleaning work on the cars torn apart. Howard decides to join the car cleaning team and finish the cars together. Geordie Phillip, who has done nothing but moan about Howard, “Sometimes too many cooks spoil the broth… I’d love to see Howard clean a car”. He’s never met this bloke before and he had done nothing but snipe. He continues that Howard is looking for a fall guy. This chap is a moaner.

Sales training tip: Watch out for sales terrorists in your business who focus everyone on the negative things and undermine your business. In today’s turbulent economy you cannot afford to have negativity like this in your teams.

“Never before have so few cars been washed by so many people in so much time” says Margaret, coming out with a line that sums up the whole of this first episode for me.

Meanwhile, both of the girls’ teams have gone proactive, flagging down cars and knocking on doors. “Imagine if we had done this all day, we would have made a killing” says one. Err, yes. You would. This task was about getting going fast and neither team managed to do that.

In the boardroom they all look dead beat. Sir Alan said, “I’m sorry. You lot look exhausted. If you cannot show more energy than this after one day’s honest work you’re unemployable. You’re all sacked.”

Now that would have been TV. But back with what actually happened…

The girls’ team, Ignite made £357 and spent £196. Profit £160.55
The boys’ team, Empire made £347 and spent £107.39. Profit just over £239.
The boys won with a pathetic per head profit of £34 per head.

Sales training thought… If I gave you a sponge and a bucket and 8 hours how much money do you think you could make cleaning cars? If you stood on a busy road junction in London and cleaned windscreens every time the lights changed and you made only £1 every 6 minutes you would make £80. This figure is, as it has been on the Apprentice many times before, is frankly pathetic. I know boy scouts who do better than this. It was a simple task and with all of their “leadership wanabe” they managed to make it very, very complicated…

Back in the board room Sir Alan concluded that the girls failed because they spent too much money. He asked who was responsible for the business plan? One of the girls said that no-one was made responsible for any particular tasks. Mona said that they wasted too much time as if, as team leader, she was not ultimately responsible. But then, if you look at the examples set in politics and big business these days, when exactly does anyone take responsibility for their errors? So how do we expect these media savvy Apprenti to behave any differently?

Mona decided to bring back Debra and Anita for no particular reason other than no-one really knew what had gone on. The girls argued. Sir Alan listened for 30 minutes and concluded that he had no idea either!

“Mona, you’ve shown me a bit of spirit, you’ve not shown me any business acumen. Anita you was on the back of that van, you was seeing the money flow out. Debra, at the end of the day you are seriously responsible for a lot things that went wrong on this task. My gut instinct is telling me something Anita. You put yourself forward as one of Britain’s best business prospects. You showed no initiative as far as I’m concerned in spotting that you were going for a disaster and on that basis, Anita, you’re fired.”

So much for grandiose titles then. Sales success is about results not titles.

Anita in the cab, “I’m bitterly disappointed but I accept that it was not a stellar performance.”

… Humility?…

“I just think that Sir Alan doesn’t particularly like lawyers”

…probably not then…

“Let see if in 10 years time he doesn’t sit and think “Hmm maybe I made the wrong decision””

…Ah, that’s better!

But, seriously Anita, surely even you can’t think that he will ever give you another thought?

So another first show and another set of Apprenti. Who will the stars be? Who will make the biggest business mistakes? Who will we learn the most from – whether from what they do well or what they do badly? What sales training tips will we pick up?

My top 5 sales training and business tips from tonight’s show…

1. Know what you sell.

They all spent far too long making everything too complicated when this was a simple task of cleaning something and pocketing the readies. It was always going to be a time based task in which they wanted as many people working on as profitable tasks as possible for as long a time as possible. As inexperienced cleaners, I would have avoided car showrooms as they are too high end and require too much of a quality clean and would have targeted the public who would not have been as discerning. For sure, they may have been able to make more per car the way they did it but they could not guarantee the numbers or the delivery quality,

2. Know the best route to market.

Time = money in this task and they needed to locate clients faster and spend more time cleaning. Period. Sometimes you just have to get your head down and get on with it. I have watched those windscreen cleaners rub a dirty cloth across car windows in West London and make £3/4 on EVERY light change. It may not be a long term business venture but this task was all about maximizing cash in and minimizing cash out.

3. Under promise over deliver.

Both teams failed to deliver satisfactorily and did not clean some of the cars sufficiently well. In the girls’ team, this cost them 10 cars which the client would then not agree for them to clean and this ultimately lost them the competition. In the boys’ team, they lost time and money. Delivering on your promises is essential in any business. This lot talked a good game but then did not knuckle down and do the job well. Sales superstars always give 100%.

4. Watch your costs.

Many business people spend too much on the wrong things at the wrong time. In today’s economy, sales are vital but we also need to manage unnecessary costs. Over spending on stock lost the girls this round.

5. Watch your mouth.

Anita mouthed off and got shot down. Top sales performers perform, they don’t talk about performing. Sales is not about what you say you’re going to do, it’s about what you actually deliver on. Sales is about results.
It will be a few weeks until we really get to grips with these new Apprenti but why not post your thoughts, comments and opinions below?

More sales training videos and articles due later this week. In the meantime, sell with passion.

Successful Selling Lying On Your Back

Gavin Ingham — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:29:45 +0000

I never cease to be amazed by how little effort many salespeople put into improving their sales skills. Ironically, of course, if you’re reading this I am probably not speaking to you. If you didn’t care about your sales development and your sales results then you probably wouldn’t be reading this at all.

One of the questions that I ask of the audience in my Selling in Tough Markets (or Selling in a Recession) keynote speech is, “Who is currently reading a book on selling?” The answer is usually about 2% of the audience at any one particular sales conference. Even if you widen this to, “Who has read a sales book in the last 6 months?” the percentage of sales professionals answering in the affirmative is still well under 10%… a very low figure by anyone’s reckoning.

Reading a book on sales, business, personal development or even a biography of a successful person can benefit you in many ways. You can benefit by…

Learning new skills, strategies and techniques. If each book that you read delivered you even just one new strategy, one new skill and one new technique what would that mean for you, your sales results and your business over the next 5-10 years? A heck of a lot – that’s what. Top performing salespeople tell me that they always learn something from every sales seminar they attend or every sales book they read. It’s only less successful salespeople that come up with the line, “I knew it all already”.
Revising, improving and reenergizing existing skills. As Anthony Robbins is fond of saying, “Repetition is the mother of skill”. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. I am constantly amazed by how much I “get” from rereading really quite basic books that I have read before. Sometimes, several times. It’s not that there is something new in there, it’s that you see stuff differently and make critical distinctions that you did not make on the first read.
Building motivation and self-confidence. People who study have an inner confidence. It comes from knowing that you know your stuff, knowing that you are in the top 5%, knowing that you can do a professional job and knowing that you have put your time in.
Continuing professional development. All professionals undertake ongoing learning programmes to improve, refresh and update their skills. Why should salespeople be any different?
Empowering yourself with a sales superstar mindset. In today’s economy, there is far too much negativity and far too many people moaning about how bad things are, how we should be prepared for the worst, how things are all going to go wrong and why there is nothing you can do about it. Spending time focusing on what you can do, what people are doing and sharpening your sales and business skills is the perfect antidote.

Listening to the news and reading many experts at the moment is like being bitten by a deadly snake – the bite won’t kill you but the poison seeping through your veins just might. I have two tips…

Take lots of pre-emptive antidote &
Try not to be bitten in the first place

That means, surrounding yourself with motivational books, audios, seminars and people and avoiding negativity as and when you can. Still not convinced? Check out what someone wrote having read Objections! Objections! Objections! recently…

I am a sales professional and have been selling for about 15 years… I have contracts that require a lot of cold calling. I seemed to not be getting anywhere and was feeling pretty de-motivated. I saw your book Objections, Objections, Objections and read it cover to cover. I put the advice into immediate practice, and from getting an appointment rate of 1 per 10 phone calls, I am now getting on average 6 per 10 phone calls – simply by changing my approach.

Now I don’t know about you but that seems like a real sales result to me. Here’s what you need to do…

Think about the areas of selling and business that you could do with a boost in.
Research books or other learning products that meet your needs.
Check out their reviews online.
Buy them.
Commit to reading 15 minute per day.

It’s amazing what you can achieve in such a short period of time. Have a great week