The name of my upcoming course, book and workshop is “Sell More Stuff – How To Enjoy Selling Your Services, Get More Yes’s & Make More Profit.” So who the hell am I and what gives me the right to train anyone in selling?
You have to understand that I’m a very private person. To be honest I had to think more than twice about posting this. On all the psychometric tests I score high as
an introvert. At age 17 I was diagnosed
with a duodenal ulcer from fear – I was terrified of people. Remember I told
you that…
My first business was at age 19 when moved from contributor
to editor of a Superhero Fanzine, and actually made money! It was an A5 stapled, black and white hobby
magazine, we had contributors all over the world posting me their articles and
material which I collated, edited, printed, and posted. Eventually we got the thing turned into a
full colour magazine which sold on the shelves of John Menzies [if you remember
that shop]. Buyers paid their
subscriptions by Postal Order [remember them?] and they were all enthusiasts about
the niche. They had an irrational
passion [that becomes important later…]
My Dad was a bank manager for The Trustee Savings Bank Of
Scotland [now Lloyds TSB] and I watched him dealing with the public, taking Her majesty's prisoners out at weekends to visit their families, and knocking on doors to
collect loan payments. He was considered
a pillar of the community. We celebrated
my 18th birthday when he took me to a company called Northwest
Securities and got me a car loan. That was where the rot started. When he
died in 1991 [on the same day as Freddie Mercury] there was no insurance, no
savings and just debts. Looking back i shouldn't have been surprised.
My first real job was in the Department of Social Security
as a Pensions officer. In that civil
service role people had no choice but to
come to us, but it taught me a lot about customer service and looking after
people. We dealt with State Pensions,
Income Support, Death Grants [Here’s a whopping £30 Mrs Smith – sorry for your
loss] and Widow’s Benefit. The
Department just wanted endless cases done efficiently and correctly, whereas I
wanted to help people and feel good about myself. They introduced a computerised system in 1989 and we helped
pilot it. Later we were asked [as we
were now experts!] if we would conduct training sessions to roll it out through
the other departments. I volunteered
because that meant I would have to stand up in front of my peers and run
workshops. Bricking it! Turns out I loved doing it and the workshops
went down a storm. And I got a wee bonus
in my salary for doing it [but was sworn to secrecy not to tell anyone].
By that point I was writing positive thinking newsletters
for the civil service newsletter. One
night a member of the Benefit Fraud Team held me by the throat against a wall
at an office party and told me to stop rocking the boat. That was it for me. I lasted seven years before I couldn’t take
it anymore.
By this time I had a gorgeous black XR31 [remember them?], a
flat, a stunning girlfriend and big circle of friends. And even more debt. And I’d just quit my job.
Then a handwritten note came though my door “Earn
Extra Income – phone this number.” I was
desperate so I called. That was my introduction
to MLM and my friend and mentor Alan.
Party plan style copy perfumes.
Seriously. Imagine a room lit by scented candles, me, 12 beauty therapists and a
bottle of Anais Anais talcum powder.
Good times J And how did I get those bookings? I did what Alan did – I put hand written notes
through people’s letterboxes, and put postcard ads up in newsagents' windows for
50p per week. Within a year I had a team
and moved up the ranks, went to the ra ra conferences and wore my shiny Regional Director badge with pride.
My Dad had died, my brother was a struggling actor and I was
up to my eyeballs in debt so I figured I needed to handle money – fast! So I became a Financial Adviser cos I figured
they knew how to handle money. I started
in Canada life - on a basic salary for 3 months then commission only, so it
meant hardcore sales. I went through
[what I now know was outdated] sales training and it was pretty brutal. Everyone had to stand on the desk and make
calls and you could only get down if you got an appointment. The XR3i had to go and I was parking my
battered old Volkswagen Jetta where clients couldn’t see it. Make calls, secure appointments, meet the
client, complete the fact find, go away and prepare a solution, go back and see
them and try to get a signature. Hated
every minute, but I needed the money.
Unfortunately my low level of sales didn’t justify them keeping
me on, so I moved to Friendly Society based in Twickenham. I was
the only Financial Adviser for the whole of Scotland, doing 3000 miles a month. This was more me, until I ploughed the
company Peugeot 306 into a bus in Glasgow one day. Generate
leads, get the appointment, conduct fact finds, present solutions, ask for the
order. I had more autonomy and the
jaunts to Twickenham every month were fun, but I still wasn’t happy in a suit
and tie trying to sell life insurance – a product everyone needed but no one
wanted. They had an introducer in every
prison in Scotland who made appointments for me [they got a finder’s fee of
course] and I ran seminars [with a memorised script and teeny weeny projector slides –
remember them?] for prison officers. We
had an irresistible offer of 8% pa interest and guaranteed money back so we went
through shed loads of Bonds so it was a pretty easy sale.
Then I got an offer from Norwich Union – I would be fed warm
leads by head office, all I had to do was turn up. Another week of albeit better sales training but
still pretty old school. Again covering
the whole of Scotland in a gorgeous Vauxhall Vectra with the flared wing
mirrors [remember them?] and a car phone.
A fricking car phone! Despite training with three different companies,
the format was usually the same. Memorising
product knowledge, painful role-playing sessions and awful telephone scripts
practised rote fashion by phoning from my hotel room to my manager in the room
next door. The queue of jittery rookies watching you while you squirm in the
spotlight. I think lasted a year – long
enough to get my Advanced Financial Planning qualification.
This was the time I launched my part time side hustle. I called it 'Therapeutic Interventions' cos I had
no idea what to call it. My brilliant
marketing strategy [because it had worked before] was to put postcard adverts
into every newsagent window along Great Western Road in Glasgow. My fee was £25 per hour only because the
longest running Hypnotherapist in Glasgow was charging £20 per hour and I
figured it was time for a new kid on the block.
I picked exam stress, learning problems and Photoreading as my
offerings. Little did I realise I was
advertising 2 months before the exams in the student district of the city. I was inundated.
By this point [thanks to the network marketing] I was addicted to personal growth audiotapes [remember
them?] NLP especially - Neuro Linguistic
Programming - and all of the aforementioned cars had been my “universities on wheels.”
By 1997 I had attended 3 different NLP Practitioner trainings and was qualified
by three different companies. Their
sales techniques were more consultative and were built of the basis of unconscious
rapport and eliciting the client’s buying strategies. Fascinating stuff and still leading edge in 1997. The rapport skills changed my life. Seriously.
One of my highest values is freedom [that’s important later]
and with my girlfriend’s blessing and encouragement, I quit my last employed
job and launched my own full time therapy business. In my first month
self-employed I made the same money as I had the previous month employed. By month two it doubled. And it just kept going up and up… In my first year I earned £9813. If you can’t make a MINIMUM of £9813 in your first year self employed then I’ll
have ZERO sympathy for you. See I was
enthusiastic about my service, I gave public workshops and talks, and tried
every marketing method I could think of.
All of my therapy clients had pain and urgency. That helps.
Having burned out my school-learned terror of public
speaking in the DSS and in every prison in Scotland, I started doing public
seminars in the areas of personal development that I was so passionate about. All of my self-help workshop attendees were
passionate about self-help. This felt
like easy street.
Later I broke into corporate training mainly from corporate
employees doing my public workshops then going back to their boss raving about
it. I sold myself into Morgan Stanley,
Barclays, Virgin, and many other household names. For four figures a day. And after they’d signed the contract they’d
always say “OK so now you’ve got the sale, tell me what you were doing with the foot tapping thing!"
NLP Trainers Training in 2001 taught a model of marketing
your business and it fitted me very well – less working one on one, more
working one on many. I also joined the
local BNI chapter [Business Networking International] as a Hypnotherapist/Life
Coach. That was a hard thing for them to
understand but I learned a lot about networking and it filled my practice. At this point I made a mistake and quit the
networking group because I was too busy, when I should have trained some
associates and grown the business.
In 2003 I hired one of the UK's most expensive business
turnaround experts and worked with him for 3 years. He had his own sales methodology and
considering he once filled a room with 55 business owners each paying £35,000 a
head for a five day course, I knew he was the guy to model. My NLP course was £1500 for 7 days so he was
a good role model. As a result of
working with a Coach my income doubled.
We were jetting off to Hawaii every 6 months, I started writing books…
Then the 2008 recession started to hurt my business and at the same time I could see the
oncoming decline in demand for NLP, so I had to reinvent or “pivot” and grow a
whole new business from scratch by offering something every business needs -
marketing. Let me tell you a quick story
about how the 2008 recession slashed my income by 60% But now I never have to worry about the
economy ever again…
I was trying to keep my business going while the credit
crunch was crippling my industry, clients were holding onto their money as the
impending crash loomed closer and I was a first time Dad into the bargain. I was struggling with juggling work, business
and family all at the same time. I was
getting more and more anxious and burned out.
I was also frustrated and behind on my bills.
Then the bottom fell out from under me when all of my
corporate clients started slashing their training budgets and the big 4 figure
paydays vanished. Which meant I couldn't
give my new family the life I promised them.
I’d told my wife it was fine for her to give up work permanently and be
a stay at home mum cos the business was growing on average 30% per year, every
year. Until now.
But I wasn't ready to give up on my dream of having
work/life balance, the freedom of running my own business on my terms, and
going to Hawaii every 6 months. Throughout my career I have studied and used advanced
influencing techniques. Then I
discovered the truth about why people buy – the psychology of sales - and
everything changed.
- First of all I mastered training other people in how to send me all the warm introductions I wanted.
- I also learned how to create sales messages that drove people to action and got them to click "BUY" on my 17 websites
- Plus I already knew how to build trust and rapport with virtually anyone… so my appointments halved and my sales doubled. This meant I could now live my dream of working from home with a rejuvenated business.
Ultimately
I’ve been able to make a huge difference in people's lives in many different
areas, including my wife and son's. This
meant I now had the power to use my passion for learning and training to have a
huge impact on the business world.
I even returned to BNI in 2010 and in my 7th year became
chapter president of the top performing chapter in the region, one of the 2
Regional Trainers responsible for teaching networking skills to all the new
members and a Director Consultant recruiting members and launching
chapters. I also went back into MLM and
in my last network marketing venture I built a team of 104 people and qualified
for a free car in 37 days.
By 2017 I was in the top 3% of BNI members, before being
conned out of thousands of pounds by 2 fellow members. Unbelievably I got dismissed by email then
told I was essentially gagged for 2 years and couldn’t use my training anywhere
else. Must be some good shit if they
didn’t want me teaching it to anyone! To
think I had breakfast at silly o’clock with the same group of people every week
for 7 years and only one of the 25 members kept in touch. Classy.
BNI likes to portray stories of chapters rallying round their fellow
members but all I got was bad mouthed.
Karma's a bitch though, isn't it?
Hurt and gutted to the core, I nursed my wounds for two
months then joined ClubFive55 networking group, and my business quintupled! I get
to sleep longer, make more money and meet nicer people!
Nowadays I use speaking, networking and marketing and only
work with clients who know what I do, want what I do and can afford it.
The way I sell myself now bears no resemblance to
the way I was taught to in my financial services days. That was more a source of what NOT to do. Having a phone sellotaped to my head until I
got a sale. Tasked with making 100 sales
calls a day. Horror stories that most
people have heard, some have experienced, [and some even enjoy] but if I’m
honest, I LOATHED and DETESTED every minute of it.
Most of what I was taught in traditional sales was Seduction. What actually works in the real world is
Attraction. And that’s what I’m going to
share with you here. “Sell More Stuff”
is my latest thinking on selling skills and sales training – but with a
difference.
So I honestly feel I've earned the right to train people in sales skills that work today. I’ve used the last few weeks to put together a FREE Cheatsheet and video called “Why They Buy – How To Attract More Paying Customers” which goes into the psychology of what makes people buy stuff and gives you the exact criteria you need to pull in more eager clients who are ready to buy from you. Email me at admin@instantedge.co.uk if you’d like a copy because it absolutely can transform your customer base if you let it.
