Sales Training Motivational Speaker | Gavin Ingham» sales training

Sometimes You Just Have To Say “No”

Gavin Ingham — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:07:57 +0000

The more amenable you are and the more you help others, the more they will like you. And the more they like you, the more they will buy from you. Right?

Maybe not.

A paper co-authored by a University of Notre Dame professor shows that moderately disagreeable men earn an average of 18 percent, or $9,772, more than the average of moderately agreeable men.

Both groups of men, though, earn more than the average salary for women — regardless of their workplace disposition. And while women are still lagging behind men in pay, disagreeable women earned 5 percent, or $1,828, over their more pleasant peers.

Chicago Sun-Times.

So I guess the nice guy or girl really does finish last.

Maybe.

It’s obviously not that simple but as a motivational speaker I certainly do get to meet a lot of nice people who spend far too much time being nice and far too little being successful because they are too worried about upsetting people and saying “No”. Here are…

5 tips to stay out of the nice guy / gal trap…

Know what’s important to you and build your life and business around that.
Don’t try and be everything to everyone. You’ll fail. When you follow your own path some people will love you, some people will hate you and some people will be indifferent. So what?
Set BIG goals that fire you up and get you motivated.
And then break these down into objectives and actions. Without a plan you’re doomed to fail. You need to know what you should be doing every day to be successful.
Work your plan.
It’s simple and it’s easy and it’s obvious but when people / things / events distract you, you’re going to get pushed off track unless you say “No”. You need to know why you’re saying “No” and what you’re supposed to be doing instead.
Stop doing things just to show you’re a “nice” person.
Make a list of all of the things that you currently do for people just to prove you’re a “nice” person. You know, the things that add no value for your business, no value for your clients, no value for your prospects and no value for you. Make a decision to stop doing them and commit to it.
Manage relationships and expectations.
Work out how you are going to reposition yourself with people and what explanations you are going to give. Think about how you are going to reposition yourself in the future with new clients and staff so that you don’t fall into this trap again.

5.5. Be nice.

Seriously. Be nice. Be nice whilst you’re saying “No”. Be nice whilst you’re not being nice. Be nice whilst you don’t do the things that other nice people do! There’s no need to be rude now is there.

No related posts.

Can Your Dad Dance?

Gavin Ingham — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:58:36 +0000

Can your Dad dance? Most can’t. I’m sure they could once but they can’t now! Music tastes changed, dancing styles changed, your Dad aged and somewhere down the line he lost touch with his ability to dance. For many Dad’s, the answer to the problem is to do their bad dancing more enthusiastically, more energetically and more desperately…

No matter, I don’t suppose that dancing is all that important in the grand scheme of things.

But business is. And life is too. And in business and in life everything changed over the last few years. The economy changed. The rules changed. Business changed. Sales changed. Life changed.

And if you want to be a success, you need to change too. What once worked, won’t work anymore. What once won customers, now doesn’t. What once helped you achieve your goals, now won’t. And doing the same old stuff, faster, more frantically and more often won’t make the wrong dance look sexy. And it won’t make you successful in business and in life either.

But that’s what much of the ruling elite want you to do. More of the same. Keep borrowing. Keep spending. Push for more of the same customers. Sell more of the same old, same old. Keep on plugging away and it will all come right. But it won’t. Because they’re out of ideas. They’re too stuck in their ways. They’re too focused on maintaing the status quo.

I’m not buying bad advice and platitudes and neither should you. It’s not good for your sales, your sanity or your business. And that’s why I am changing the approach, mixing it up, adding even more value for you and sharing with you strategies to help you to be more successful in 2012 and beyond. There will be more of some things, less of others and a whole new series of blogs, videos, tips and strategies to help you to make the right changes in your life and in your business.

Join the RSS, get on my success newsletter and let’s get cracking.

Take Stock, Take Charge & Take Action!

Gavin Ingham — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:10:14 +0000

Why do some people achieve so much more than others? Why do some people seem to have all of the time in the world to get things done whilst others constantly seem to be frazzled? How can some people win new clients every month, service existing clients amazingly, manage sales teams, become industry go-to resources, deliver awesome lectures, write books, climb mountains, run marathons, have fabulous social activities? And live the life of their dreams as well?

And yet others struggle to remove themselves from firefighting, admin and dealing with challenges and spend their mornings, noons and evenings glued to their email?

It’s an important question. It might be one of the most important. Ultimately, you will be defined by what you do and by what you achieve not by how busy you are!

Being busy is not the same as being successful. Working hard is not the same as working smart. Putting the hours in is pointless if you’re working on the wrong activities.

When I work with businesses I see busy people, energetic sales teams and frantic business leaders. I see many, many people working hard to “get things done”…

But “getting things done” is sometimes not the same as achieving your objectives!

My lifelong passion is all about understanding what differentiates top performers and then helping others to achieve it too. What makes one person a sales superstar and another a sales wannabe? What empowers one person to be a rock star presenter and another a washout? What is it that enables one leader to lead their team to “victory” whilst another couldn’t lead theirs to the pub?

And one of the key differences is that top performers spend more time working on activities that lead to results.

Simple truth…

If two people of equal ability, passion and knowledge work the same market in the same way but one spends 50% of their time on activities that lead to results and the other only spends 25% then the first one will outperform the second one. Every time.

This is simple and obvious and yet it is not something which drives many peoples’ behaviours. Over time, most people fall into habits…

We do things because “we should”, we do things because “we always have”, we do things because “that’s the way others do it”, we do things because “we were told to”…

But we ought to be doing things because they get us the results that we want.

Here are 3 simple steps to get you more of the results that you want in your sales, in your business and in your life…

Step 1: Take stock.

Ask yourself what results you want and then work out what activities directly lead to those results. Map how you spend your time… How much time do you spend on these results based activities versus how much time do you spend doing other things?

Step 2: Take charge.

Commit time to results based activities. Protect this time. Make it sacrosanct. Do not be distracted. Drop “time-wasting” activities, stop acts of procrastination and learn to say “No” (to yourself and others).

Know that everybody has the same amount of time in a day and how you spend yours is down to you.

Step 3: Take action.

Make it happen. Change happens in an instant. How you spend your time will determine your results so take action now to get on the road to the results that you want.

And finally, be your own coach, assessing how you do, refining your approach and holding yourself accountable.

And here’s the magical thing. This is a never-ending process because the more successful you are, the more you have to work on this process and the greater the opportunities are to improve.

Let me know how you get on…

The Death Of Cold Calling? Not Today Thanks.

Gavin Ingham — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 15:32:48 +0000

I had an amazing day at the ISMM’s Successful Selling conference yesterday making several amazing video interviews (watch this space… you’re going to love them), meetings many interesting people and all culminating in a motivational sales keynote talk to 500 motivated and professional salespeople. What a great day!

Clearing my emails, catching up from a week away and planning for next week, I just received this into my inbox…

Just to confirm our shared opinion on the best days to call, I’ve just made an absolute gem of an appt. Friday afternoons are the best! Thanks for the course at RIBA last week its proving valuable. Four quality appts this week.

Now, what I actually said was that plenty of people don’t like making proactive calls on Friday afternoons because “nobody is in” but that I always find them productive…

But the main lesson from this is that if you plan for your calls, make them relevant, make them intelligent, make them about the individual that you are calling, make them professionally then you can get proven results. One of the videos I recorded yesterday is all about new business calls and it’s a chat between myself and one of the directors of a telemarketing agency. Watch this space as it is full of tips and strategies and you’re going to love it.

Sales Partner Or Dancing Puppet?

Gavin Ingham — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 14:50:51 +0000

After closing a sales conference this week, one of the audience approached me to ask about a sales presentation that they had recently failed to win. They wanted to know what they could have done about it and how they could improve their chance of winning a similar pitch next time.

After asking a few questions it became patently clear that the reason why the sale had failed was that the salesperson had never been treated as an equal by the client and was never really in the running.

Many things had not gone perfectly…

Prior to the sales presentation the client had refused to answer any questions from the sales team making the presentation.
The client had only informed the presenters of the time and date of the presentation the day before.
The presentation was at 9am in the morning 200 miles away from the office of the sales team.
The client was running late on the day and kept them waiting for half an hour with only a scant apology.
The client’s team who attended the presentation deliberately refused to make any polite chat, refused to engage like normal human beings, were overtly rude and refused to answer any questions.
No feedback was given at the time of the presentation and no promise of timely feedback was given.
The sales team had no idea who they were “competing” against nor the criteria by which they were being judged…

A particularly bad example and I could carry on but I am sure that you have had to deal with many similar situations.

Far too many clients think that the way to conduct sales meetings and presentations is to treat your potential business “partners” as dancing puppets where all they have to do is tweak the string and you do the jig. And far too many sales teams accept this course of affairs as just the way things are or the way that they have to be.

One of my friends works for a well-known organization who set up meeting after meeting for him to attend. At every one, by the time he attends, the client is looking down on him from a great height. It’s a totally one-way process. He performs, they yell to him from the stage wings, “Jump!” and he has little choice other than to scream back, “How high?!” Failure to do so would be unacceptable to his clients and unacceptable to his management team who are the very people who position the meetings so poorly in the first place. His management team think that this is how you do business.

Once you are out of position it is difficult to get back into position. Once you position yourself as less important that your prospects, it is unlikely you will repair the mismatch. Once you devalue your offering, you will struggle to create the value or the relationships that you want and need to build the relationships and the business that you want.

Far too many sales presentations are one-way affairs where sales teams effectively beg for business and prospective clients bestow their deity-like, benevolence on the lucky “winner”.

It doesn’t have to be and it shouldn’t be this way. If you want partnership relationships with clients who believe in you and appreciate the value that you add, if you want to be paid commensurate with the work you do, if you want sustainability, satisfaction and success then you have to get your positioning right and this has to be done right from the start of your relationship.

Getting yourself in position may sometimes prove challenging and it may not always be possible but equally getting out of position is not something that just happens, it is something that you allow to happen!

I talk about this in my sales masterclasses and even run one off seminars from time to time on positioning. It is that important. I even touch on it in my New Rules of Selling seminar which will be taking place in London in November… but you can start to do something about it today by focusing on a few simple things.

Here are 6 to get you started…

Define your clients. Who are they? Why do they work with you? How do you add value for them?
Position yourself as an expert. Create a brand and a name for yourself that attracts clients to you because of what you can do for them. Clients come to me because of what I do not because I am just another sales speaker.
Keep your engines running. Far too many salespeople take their feet off the gas when they have “enough” business and their sales activities career to a grinding halt. Lack of opportunities can create desperation and desperation makes it hard to not start playing the fiddle furiously whenever anyone instructs you to dance a jig.
Get familiar with the word, “No”… saying it and hearing it. If you are in the wrong place, with the wrong client or pursuing the wrong opportunity and you cannot do anything about it, “No” can be the most liberating, time saving and sales boosting option.
Build huge value. It’s easy for clients to treat salespeople as “all the same” if they are pretty much interchangeable. Whilst technology and transparency may have made products and approaches pretty much interchangeable, your expertise, your personal approach and the value that you deliver is not.
Be honest. Many sales and business people have long wooden noses when it comes to not admitting that they are dancing like puppets on a string. Without honesty about your current relationships and your current situation, how can you improve it?

Start now by having a think about the relationships you have, where they’re at, how you can add more value to them and what you need to do to be seen as more equal than your competitors in the future…