Business Growth & Next Generation Leadership

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What Do You Think About Sales Training? Here's My Take...

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 18^th 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. 

Fear-Based Decisions Are Bad for Business

At one point, every business owner will find him or herself in a troubling situation. Revenue is down. New clients are scarce. Profits are falling, and a peek at the financials is enough to bring on a full-fledged anxiety attack.   

Unless you’re Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, chances are you’ve experienced that sinking feeling of a business that’s trending downward, too. But how you handle it can mean the difference between continued success and business-killing burnout.

Here’s where a lot of business owners start to self-sabotage. They start to worry about money, and that worry leads to poor decisions that ultimately have a negative impact not just on finances, but—maybe more importantly—on morale, too. Or feeling surrounded by competition and giving up the ghost.   Maybe you know what I’m talking about.

Wasting hours of your life enduring Business Networking meetings and coming away with nothing to show for it.  Or fruitless meeting after meeting and you dreading coming home for you partner to ask how it went…

You Take On the Wrong Calibre Of Client

Let’s be honest here – we might hate to admit it, but we all know there IS a difference between low-end clients and high-end clients. In my experience, the customers who plead poverty and haggle prices with you cause you the most grief and are the most demanding.  The clients who didn’t even ask about price are prompt, do their homework and are delightful.  [Makes you wonder what kind of customer YOU are…]

Now when money is tight, it can be tough to keep your ideal client avatar in mind. Instead, you jump at the chance to work with anyone who comes along. The trouble with this scenario is you are so desperate that you pounce at the slightest whiff of a sale.  There’s an old saying that “Bad salesmen have skinny kids” because the client can smell your desperation.  That also makes you feel awkward and sleazy in case you’re coming across like a predatory double glazing salesman from the 70’s.  Then you can find yourself with a roster full of clients who:

·       Aren’t willing or able to do the work you ask them to

·       Spend all their time telling you why your ideas and advice won’t work, or finding fault with every detail

·       Drain your energy and make you dread your office, or cringe when their name appears on your phone.

True story - When I wrote my first book “Ignite & Unshackle” in 2006 I had this one chap who hounded me to get one of the first copies.  I mean he emailed me daily, phoned every other day, chasing chasing chasing… for 3 weeks.  As soon as the box arrived I carefully packaged the book up in its cellophane wrapper, inserted a thank you letter and the 3 free CD’s that went with it into a padded jiffy bag and took it to the post office, paid extra to send it recorded delivery and emailed him to say it was on its way. 

Three days later I got the book back in the mail, still in its cellophane, with a post it note saying “I changed my mind.”  But he kept the free cd’s!  Jeez man if you just wanted the cd’s you could have asked for them!

You Stop Creating

And who can blame you? With profits down, you have to pull back. You can’t afford to spend time and money creating new programmes or offers, so you recycle the ones you’ve already produced.

Now, this would be ideal if you were repurposing with a positive intent. Turning your e-book into a group coaching course? Perfect! But that’s not what your fearful brain is telling you.

Your fearful self is saying, “Just re-release this same product again, so I don’t have to have new sales copy written or record new videos.”   And while this might help bring in a bit of cash short-term, it won’t do anything for your reputation or your self-esteem.

Errr… no. That’s no way to operate a business, but that’s just what a fear-based mind-set can do to you. Better (much better) to make a MINDSHIFT and hold out for that perfect client. And while you’re waiting, take what you’ve learned from your drop in sales and create the killer product your audience is clamouring for!

That’s what I’ve done – 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. 

No more wasting time on low probability prospects who just use up your time or suck you dry.  These 7 factors will get you more yes’s, make selling feel more like helping  and fill you with confidence knowing you’re helping your ideal clients solve problems which they gladly pay you for. 

Sales Techniques To Make More Money From Your Business

Try the Profit Growth Calculator for yourself at https://instantedgeonline.com/newprofit

Leadership

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