In January you will, no doubt, get a flurry of goal-setting articles and emails from people like me. They’re great but the truth is, they’re probably too late! You should be thinking, dreaming and planning now so take this opportunity to share your dreams and goals below. A goal written down and shared in public will be far more powerful than one you keep hidden away, scared to share in the darkest recesses of your mind! Share your goals for 2011 below…

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As a sales author, sales motivational speaker and sales force development consultant it is very important that I walk the talk and continue to learn and develop myself. One activity which I am always recommending to clients, friends and everyone alike is to keep reading new, old and interesting ideas to keep yourself stimulated and on top of your game. My personal favourite subjects for reading about are personal development, sales training, sales force development, motivation and mindset, general business and marketing.

Nowadays I read a lot of blogs and am subscribed to several via RSS feeds. One blog which I read regularly is Trish Jones’ blog. Trish designed GavinIngham.com and did a good job of meeting exactly what I wanted and needed. She recently posted two interesting posts on blogging as a sales tool and whether blogging can sell services or just products.

These are great questions and ones which every sales person, business owner and entrepreneur needs to consider and as with all great questions there are probably several answers but first a little “sermon” about blogs and blogging…

Many blog marketeers have an inherent interest in positioning blogs as the second coming, as the only marketing required in your mix, as all you need to succeed in selling your products, services, or indeed anything  that you want to sell.

For most people and for most businesses this is, at best, misleading and, at worst, dishonest. Blogs are a great form of marketing but they are only one form of marketing. Even if your business is your blog you still need to understand how to market your blog in the same ways that you might market a normal website.

Blogs do not market themselves!

What’s worse is that you can market a brochure style, static website and if you do it well people will visit and when they do they may well buy from you. When you market a blog site people will read your blogs first, before they buy anything. This means that you have to write well if want to make any sales. For you to make sales on a blog site people have to want to read what you write, see value in what you write and like the way that you wrote it too.

And they still have to like, want or need your product or service enough to buy it or to make that call!

If your blog is not well written and people do not like it they will not buy anything off you even if they do come to your blog!

If you only market in the “blogosphere” and your target prospects and clients are in the “real world” you are not going to bring in shed loads of new customers. Many of my clients do not even know that my site is a blog, they just like reading it! They don’t post comments, they email me and I respond!

Blogging also needs to be consistent. It is not a quick fix. Indeed it is probably one of the slowest routes to market and requires far more effort than many other instant fix marketing options (think Google adwords).

In my opinion, blogging also needs to be personal. Your content needs to be yours if you want to sell your services and you need to read and respond to your “community” on your blog. This is all very time consuming.

So why would anybody blog?

• To demonstrate expertise.
• To share a passion.
• To promote long-lasting marketing content.
• To build a following.
• To set themselves a cut above everyone else.

But it’s not easy.

Everyone and their dog seem to be setting up blogs these days. Blogging is highly competitive. Whatever your industry is there will already be good blogs with reader bases up and running. To compete with this you need a good subject, a passion about your subject, real knowledge, good writing ability, a strong message, design skills, marketing skills and a connection with your audience. Perhaps most importantly you need to be able to add value for your readers constantly walking the line between interesting and factual. This is the minimum that you need (or need to buy in) to even get you off the starting line…

But can a blog sell a service?

Well… After converting my website at www.gaviningham.com to a blog some 18 months ago I have blogged consistently and on theme. Traffic has grown, readership has grown, enquiries have grown and conversion ratios have upped.

But does my blog sell my services?

Partly.

Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. I think most times my blog pre-sells people on the idea of working with me. They read my blogs and they know what I am about. They get my message and they like it. I guess that those who don’t, never call.

But those who do are pre-sold to a certain extent. You still need to know how to sell. You still need to solve their pains with your solutions. You still need to position your solution effectively. You still need to do all of the other good stuff.

As with all areas of sales and marketing, blogging is not a quick fix super drug that will turn your business around over night but if you have time to commit to it, if you are passionate about it and if you make it part of your overall sales and marketing mix then blogging is a powerful weapon for selling whatever it is that you’re selling.

No related posts.

A few weeks ago I was enjoying the sun on my back and a long cool drink on my balcony in Spain when I got a message to call Jennifer Celerier from this year’s Apprentice. Having written so much about them I was intrigued so I decided that I would give her a call straight back.

Apparently, both she and Kristina Grimes (who came second in 2007) had enjoyed my blogs on the Apprentice and wanted to talk to me about a sales and business project that they were planning…

I think that you’ll like what they have planned and I’ll tell you more as it progresses but in the meantime I have agreed with them that we’re going to do a podcast together in the next few weeks. We intend to talk about sales, business, the Apprentice and life in general so if you enjoyed watching them and the Apprentice this will be a must listen podcast.

I’m not promising that I will be able to ask all of them but if you do have any questions for them, why not pop them into comments below? Even if I don’t ask them on the podcast they’ve promised that they’ll swing by and read them and maybe answer them on the web too.

So watch out for that podcast and more about their project in the next few posts…

Related posts:

1. The Sales Apprentice 2008: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part IV
2. The Sales Apprentice: Sales Training & Business Development Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part IX
3. The Sales Apprentice: Sales Training Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part X

In last week’s Apprentice the task was to rent out high end supercars. The team making the most sales would be the winner. A sales task plain and simple and one which created many interesting sales training and business lessons..

Sales managers for the day on the two teams were Michael (leading Helene and Claire) and Lee leading Lucinda and Alex. Their first task was to pick two cars per team that they would have to sell…

Michael picked a Ferrari and a Spyker, Lee an Aston Martin and a Zonda. These cars varied in sales rental quotes massively, from just over £600 per day for the Ferrari to £2750 per day for the Zonda! It’s not often in life that you can call a Ferrari cheap but in this company it most definitely seemed it particularly given the fact that the Ferrari could be sold on an hourly rental but the Zonda was only available by the day!

Sales training and business tip: This choice of cars would prove to be a wise choice for Lee’s team with a clutch of Zonda sales winning the task for him and team Alpha. There’s a lot of talk of risk taking in these shows with little to substantiate the choices. In business and in sales your choice of products and territories should be based on consientious research not guesswork!

Anyhow, this brave decision to go for such an expensive car won the day but it would have been knives at dawn for the person who made that decision if they had failed to sell any!

At the start of the show we saw Michael wandering around with a towel looking less energetic than a hibernating bear. When he found out what the task was he seemed to leak energy and ended up resembling a deflated balloon. He told the camera that he abhorred cars and that, “They are alien to me.” For all the talk of him being young and enthusiastic, there was little evidence of it. He’s only been working for a year (apparently) and he obviously has a thing or two to learn yet about sustained motivation!

Sales training tip: Success in business and sales is not about saying you’re great, it’s about proving it! That requires energy, drive and persistence; you need to keep on going when everyone else has given up and gone home. To be this tired in the middle of what is, after all, only a few weeks worth of work does not bode well…

Meanwhile, over on Lee’s team, all was not well… again! Lucinda, Lee and Alex seemed to have picked up where they left off last week – at each other’s throats! Annoyingly, this is one of those situations where we just haven’t seen enough to judge what is really going on and who is really to blame.

So here’s how I see it… you may agree… or not!

• Lucinda is a bit “kooky” in her berets, hats and scarves and takes a part intellectual, part emotional response to tasks. She has some good points (management) and some bad ones (sales and whining!).
• Lee and Alex are slightly scruffy, self-educated “salespeople” (in the broadest term of the word). They don’t seem to get on with her particularly well and I doubt they would socialise with her out of the programme. They think she is whiny and they don’t think that she adds anything to the team… particularly not in a selling task.
• They do not listen to her… Lucinda clearly suggested the raffle idea but then neither of the boys could or would remember that.
• They dismiss her… sending her off selling by herself after she said, “I don’t want to be myself” and Lee said, “You won’t be!”

Sales management tips: Sales management is not about taking the best accounts and selling into them yourself. Sales management is not about pairing up your best people (Alex and Lee in this case) and abandoning your weaker salespeople to sink or swim. Sales management is not about dismissing your team players when they want to learn. Sales management is not about failing to make decisions and then blaming others for not making them for you (Lee on whether Lucinda should or should not sell tickets for the Zonda, “Just f*****g make a decision!).

Irrespective of the fact that they won or that Lucinda was out of her depth in tonight’s sales task, Lee failed as a sales manager tonight.

Over on team Renaissance another sexual split had taken place only with Helene and Claire splitting away from Michael. Helene and Claire have radically different selling styles from each other with Claire focusing on emotions (“Do you want to hear the engine?” to an enthusiastic male sales prospect and liberal use of emotional language) and Helene focusing on facts (“They want specs” she says).

The final results will speak for themselves with Claire making numerous sales and Helene none.

Sales training tip: People buy on emotion and justify with logic. An impulse purchase of a few hours or a weekend in a supercar is always going to be an emotional choice! The size of the engine and the horsepower is not going to move people to getting their cheque books out! The thought of the wind in your hair, the jealous glances on the street and a pretty person by your side just might!

Michael, meanwhile, was trawling a veritable smorgasbord of locations in London where you would be most unlikely to be able to sell a car! He finished up in the Portobello market in Notting Hill will with a, and I jest not, German food van next to him, a dust cart parked by him and empty black bags strewn all over the road. The Italian Lakes this was not.

Roll up! Roll up! Get your hot bratwursts and schnitzels. Hot and spicy sausages to take away. With or without onions. Oh, and don’t forget your Ferrari rental!

Yeah, righto. Fool!

At 5pm both teams headed for Canary Wharf where they had 4.5 hours to sell as many more rentals as they could. Michael, who thinks he is a great salesperson despite the fact that he sold nothing, is losing it, “If you’re not going to do it for a weekend, at least a day. At least a day. Bl***y h*ll!”

Hopefully, Andy Smith will write something in the comments about emotional intelligence… Emotional intelligence is about self-awareness, about being more aware of how you feel, more aware of how those feelings affect your behaviours and more aware of how those behaviours affect others. It is also about being more aware of other’s emotions and how they affect their communications.

Emotional intelligence is a key skill for salespeople, sales managers, business owners and leaders. Michael was clearly frustrated at this stage and had lost it.

“Inside my brain I’m meant to be a high calibre salesman,” he opined. Yes Michael, and there, like many of your Apprentice “friend” is your problem… inside your head.

In the board room…

• Sir Alan asked Lee why he sent Lucinda by herself.
• He asked Lucinda if she thought she got pushed aside.
• Lee said that you cannot hand hold people. (Maybe not Lee, but to abandon a third of your teamis just foolish).
• Lucinda said that she was impressed with her own improvement during the task.
• Sir Alan pointed out to her that she didn’t sell anything!
• Lucinda said that she was not any good at closing.
• Sir Alan said that selling was about closing deals.
• Sir Alan asked Michael why he went to Portobello Road market where he clearly was never going to sell any cars?
• Michael told Sir Alan that, “He’s be surprised!”

  Sales training tip: Don’t fight with reality! You will never win! How can you look like anything but a fool when you sit there and say things like that with the results so horribly stacked against you?”
   

• Michael said that he was a good salesman.
• Sir Alan asked if he thought that even though he did not sell any cars?
• Michael replied in the affirmative.

The results…

Renaissance with sales manager Michael, £2114. Alpha with sales manager Lee, £11,815 with Alex closing more than £8000 of the sales.

The Renaissance show down…

Back in the board room it became evident that Claire was safe when up against Helene and Michael. Sir Alan seemed unimpressed with both Helen and Michael. Surely Michael, finally, had to go. After some soul searching and some grand claims from both of them about their commitment Sir Alan made his decision, “Michael, I think I have to say to you… you’re fired.”

In the car Michael was busy pulling victory from the jaws of defeat, “He saw something in me that reminded me of what he was like when he was younger.”

I wonder if Sir Alan would put it that way? Unlikely, I think.

Sales training and business lessons from tonight’s show…

Know your market!

Knowledge of your market, who buys from you, when, where and why is critical for your success. Knowing which cars would and would not sell, at what prices and to whom proved to be a decisive factor in tonight’s show.

Perhaps this was luck, perhaps they did some research when we weren’t watching! No matter. If this was your business, then this knowledge would be critical.Claire made many smaller sales tonight but could not compete with the huge daily rental fee of £2,750 of the Zonda.

Work on your sales skills.

In tonight’s show we saw Lee’s team win because they made bigger sales. This was partly due to the more expensive Zonda rental price although also because they were selling full day rentals not hourly ones.

Claire did a good job of “upselling” from one hour to three but seemingly failed to sell any full day or weekend rentals.

You can help yourself to make more sales and at higher prices by getting into the mindset of your clients. £600+ for one day for a Ferrari may seem a lot to our humble (now there’s a word I wouldn’t have thought that I could have got into a sentence about them!) Apprentices but to a city trader with million pound plus bonuses how much is it really?

Let your results speak for themselves.

I’m sick and tired of hearing how good they are.

Prove it.

Many salespeople I work with tell me how good they are. They tell me how good they could be. They tell me how they could close more sales if only… they had a better territory, they were more respected, the market was different, the price was lower, they were more competitive…

Poppycock!

Sales results are all that counts. Not words. I don’t care what you could, might or should have done. That won’t impress me, it won’t impress your boss and it won’t pay the rent!

Michael had no prospects because he did not know how to prospect not because there were no prospects.
Claire made too few bigger sales because she did not go for them not because the clients weren’t there.
Lucinda only made one sale because she spent too much time making some tickets that the team never used rather than speaking to people!

The great thing about sales is that it’s not about education, background or upbringing, it’s about results.

In sales, results speak for themselves. Can you handle it?

Related posts:

1. The Sales Apprentice 2008: Sales Training & Business Development Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part VI
2. The Sales Apprentice 2008: Sales Training & Business Development Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part VIII
3. The Sales Apprentice: Sales Training & Business Development Tips From The Hit TV Show, Part IX

For the last few days I have been in Switzerland running a sales training seminar for one of my clients. I really like Switzerland – the people are friendly, the country is clean, things run on time and the chocolate is fantastic!

Last time I went over to Switzerland I flew straight into and out of Zurich (via Amsterdam) so I thought this time it would be a great idea to fly into Geneva, take a couple of days driving along two of the lakes and on to Zurich. Hence, yesterday afternoon I found myself with some time to spare in Geneva airport.

My fiancée, who had come with me on this trip, is thinking about buying a new watch but is still in the, “I’m not sure what I want yet” stage. That said, if she had tried on a watch that she really wanted we would have bought it…

As luck might have it Geneva airport is full of… you guessed it… watch and chocolate shops (well what else would you expect?). Watch shops seemed to be the lesser of two evils so we thought that she should try some watches on. You wouldn’t have thought selling a watch was something that you could get that wrong would you…

You’d be wrong!

After pointing at three different watches the sales assistant got them out for us and Alex tried them on. They were all quite nice but it was clear that her decision making processes were leading her towards a sporty little number with a black face. We had already seen this watch elsewhere with a silver face; a sale was looking likely.

So let’s pick up the sales conversation from this point in the sales process. Keep in mind that the whole of the conversation below can be heard by myself, Alex and the sales assistant…

Alex: “I still like this one the best. It’s the same one we saw before in Zurich but with the black face rather than the silver one. (To the sales assistant) Do you have it with the silver or white face too?”
Sales: “No.”
Alex: (To me) “What do you think of the black face?”
Me: “I like it. I think it looks sporty but professional too. It’s fine for work or casual.”
Alex: “Yes.”
Sales: “I don’t like it.”
Alex: (Thinking she has misheard) “Sorry?”
Sales: “I don’t like it.”
Alex: (Still struggling with this concept) “Sorry, you don’t like this watch?”
Sales: “No.”
Alex: “Oh.” (A bit crestfallen!)
Sales: “Yes, I think you need something more glamorous. You couldn’t wear this with an evening dress.”
Alex: “I don’t want to, I have a watch for that. This is for every day wear.”
Sales: “Yes, but even so I think I would prefer something like this.”

The sales assistant then got out a totally different watch which we had not expressed an interest in even though it was only a couple of watches away from the others in the sales display. This watch looked nothing like the others. It had a metal (silver coloured) bracelet the same as the others but it was much more shiny. Much more bling! The face was much bigger, probably twice as big, and it was encrusted with diamonds all around the watch face. Oh, and it was also twice as expensive!

Alex: (Without hesitation and without trying it on) “I don’t like that.”
Sales: “I think it’s much more you. I mean, it’s only my opinion but the other one is not right and this one is much more you.”
Alex: “I don’t like it.” (Clearly getting annoyed)
Sales: “It’s much more you.”
Alex: (to me) “I don’t want a watch. Let’s go!”

Hey! I don’t think this one even requires any sales training or business tips other than to say…

Make sure that your staff are trained properly to deal with the sales situations that they find themselves in! Every member of staff who comes face to face with customers and clients needs a basic understanding of sales and selling… and a dollop of common sense and communication skills to boot!
 

Related posts:

1. Why I Bought Private Medical Care And Why You Should Sell On Value And Never On Price
2. How To Upsell And Cross-Sell To Achieve Rapid Sales Growth
3. How To Sell More In Competitive Markets