……just don’t ask me how!

So there I was just preparing to write my blog on how well Danny and Anna-Marie did in the latest task, about their "out of the box" thinking, their creativity and their activity rates and up comes Gavin with one deal and he wins the whole damn show.

Ridiculous really.

His sob sob story about how crap he was to the guy who pledged £20,001 was pretty appalling.

Still, that’s by the by (embedded comand for a sale there! "by" instead of "buy") well done Gavin!

Nice guys can win but it was a complete fluke and you got lucky.

It just shows that you should never give up but by Gavin winning it really made a mockery out of the entire series and how must Danny be feeling? Absolutely gutted I would think.

By far, the best sales person on the show was Danny and he ended up with nothing.

Anna-Marie - you did a great job too.

I had loads to say about how well you two guys did but I’m still gobsmacked and I’ve been up since 4am as I had an early bird flight to Amsterdam this morning so my typing skills at 12:00am are not too hot!

So this brings the Natural Born Sellers series to a close. ITV should have pulled their fingers out and sold it more themselves. I don’t think they’ll be another series.

But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the series and I’ve also enjoyed the email and telephone chats I’ve had with most of the contestants and I’ve made friends with quite a few of them too.

All the very best and happy selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat

The UK’s #1 Authority On Sales Success

MTD Sales Training

QUICK NOTE - I was bombarded with emails asking where my comments were on the blog this week. My apologies but I was in Amsterdam giving a keynotes talk to a team of sales people at their yearly conference so I had to watch the episode on internet tv just now!

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Ok, onto this weeks observations:

Boring boring Danny!

Sorry mate - only joking. You’re by far the best salesperson on the show and yet again you won the spoils.

Here are my comments from the latest episode of Natural Born Sellers where the sales people were asked to sell environmentally friendly cleaning products.

Giving Demonstrations

If you ever have to give demonstrations get the audience involved.

When I say involved I mean ask them lots of questions, get them participating and get them to actually demonstrate the products themselves. They need to see how good the products are and see themselves using the products.

Dan - when you did the demo you asked a couple of great questions to start:

"How much time do you spend cleaning each year?" and "How much do you spend on cleaning on products each year?"

This unearthed wants and desires.

Someone said they spent £800. Dan knew that his products would cost £300 and that’s over 3 years so he could use this info to his advantage.

You see, you need to ask questions to find the best angle on which to sell the products. It didn’t come as any suprise that he did a couple of grand in that demo.

So - ask questions, build rapport and get them involved.

When Thea and Dan attended a demo at the start they hardly did any of this mainly due to lack of a gameplan and teamwork.

Lack Of Belief

What came across in spades was a total lack of belief in the product. Sure, the manager Sara had it but she had a vested interest in it all but the sales people just didn’t have it.

Lesson - if you are selling anything that doesn’t make you passionate about it, then get out.

Sales Manager

Sara the sales manager was interesting. She told Gavin off for acting the goat when wearing the glove costume "It devalues the brand" she said

Oh come on!

If the purpose of the costume is to be worn do you expect someone to wear it who is deadly serious?  It looked awful period. If you don’t want to devalue the brand with the costume here’s my advice….

Bin the thing.

Also, how can any brand be built of you are selling it in a shopping mall where your sales people are begging for orders on commission? mmmmmm let me think about that one.

Anna-Marie

Still my outsider for the competition - you have been since the start. You’ll have to come up on the inside rails to beat Dan though.

Girl - you got beat up on the show this time. Take it as a bad day at the office. You got through, we all have bad days and you live to fight another day.

Thea

If you could channel the way that you sell I think you would be bloomin good. You are a go-getter and want to get out there but some of your techniques suck.

Gavin

You keep saying to Johnny C that you can’t sell and you know what? You’re right. Still, you’re a damn good laugh and good for team spirit. No offence, it’s just that some people are suited to selling and others are not.

So, it’s onto the final!

Onwards and upwards!

Sean

Sean McPheat

The UK’s #1 Authority On Sales Success

http://www.mtdsalestraining.com

The Natural Born Sellers Update - Selling Hot Tubs at the Southampton Boat Show

So Danny wins his third top dog position in 4 weeks! Awesome. He is definately a natural born seller.

….and Gavin scraped in again!

And it’s Gavin’s selling I want to look at within this update.

YOU CAN ACTUALLY BE TOO FRIENDLY

Gavin got a rollickin from his Sales Manager after being told he was too friendly and too jokey. I brought this up in the last post. Gavin’s style is jokey and friendly but in my opinion is too friendly and way too jokey to the point that his prospects will not take him seriously.

There is a fine line between friendliness and "doing the business". Get it wrong and you just look like a stand up comic who should be doing the Social Club rounds. Get it right and the world can be your oyster.

The thing with Gavin is that he does not look like a salesman. He looks like an ordinary, boy next door kinda chap. This is a HUGE advantage for him if only he would lose all of the ridiculous one lines. He’s a naturally likeable chap so he doesn’t need to act the goat all of the time.

The problem with the JOKER is that you are too wrapped up in what you are saying and the one liners that you fail to listen to opportunities and what really matters. Be friendly and leave it at that.

GAVIN HAD A DOSE OF MONEY MOUTH

Gavin also had the killer disease called MONEY MOUTH on the last day. That’s when your desire and need for the money shines through in your posture, body language, your eyes and tonality. He was trying too hard and this comes across to your prospects.

MONEY MOUTH is one of the main reasons why Sales People lose scores fo sales each year. Make sure you never have a dose of it!

Happy Selling!

Sean McPheat

Managing Director

MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

The competition took a cut throat approach tonight as the “silent assassin” Anna-Marie voted out one of the strongest contestants in Scott English.

Gavin was yet again in the bottom three and is by far the worst sales person in the group and has been from day one. Although very likeable, he talks a good talk but doesn’t delivery the goods.

Scott on the other hand, I have taken to. He’s shown a “softer side” since episode one and his enthusiasm and work ethic is awesome. A real go-getter. Take this as a complement Scott - Anna-Marie did the right thing in voting you off, I’d take it as a huge compliment. With you out of the way, Anna-Marie has a far better chance of winning the whole thing.

Okay, let’s get on to some good, bad and the ugly of tonights show.

THE BAD

Come on ITV WTF are you doing moving the show to 10:40. Get a life! The ratings are only 1.7 million but what did you do about it? Nothing. There was not advertising, no promotion. I think ITV have come out as the worse sellers of the lot! You could have positioned it in the right way, not as the BBC’s Apprentice but something completely different. With no pre-sell it was always going to be demoted to a later slot.

By the way ITV - Sales people like me and all of the other sales people around the country work long bloody hours so staying up to 11:40 on a school night is not on.

Ok, rant over.

Scott - you should have kept tabs on that mum and son when handing them over to finance. They are not sales people, never have been, so I feel they lost you a sale.
Scott - one thing that annoys me with you is when you always use “Trust me” it’s complete tosh! You don’t need to use that all of the time. The trust will come with what you say, you don’t need to say it - let your prospects feel it and it will help you close more sales.

The Good

Dan - great closing line. That guy was umming and arrrring and you took over with “Shall we start doing the paperwork?” A nice lead in to the next steps - well done.
Dan - the look of your face when having lunch Thea made my night!

Anna-Marie - thanks for your call to my office today. I enjoyed our chat. Well done on winning tonight. Well done on overcoming the discount request too - you built the value and kept your cool.

Scott - your work ethic is awesome. Lively, enthusiastic - spot on. Well done for using your initiative to cold call the limo firms. You “made things happen”. The show will be worse off without you.

The Ugly

Just about everything Thea did.

Overall Thoughts

ITV was the natural born loser tonight by moving the slot. My dark horse as mentioned on my very first blog Anna-Marie is still in the running although she is keeping very tight lipped on whether she won or not.

Selling Limos at a trade show is tough especially at £50k+. It takes technique and the right approach and when having a stand the art is having a number of luke warm to hot leads before you open the doors who know where you are etc

Onto next week!

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

The Natural Born Sellers roadshow moved to Wakefield this week with West Yorkshire Windows.

Click here for my comments on Natural Born Sellers Episode III

Here are my observations, comments and thoughts…

A School Boy Error
Danny’s first attempt at a sale was a right cock up. Two straight talking OAP’s came into the showroom, he duly set the appointment, went out to their house, measured up and then gave them a quote that was 50% higher than their budget.

He should have qualified the amount they had to play with and worked around this. Instead, he wasted a lot of time and effort and then came back to work with a right mard on.

Dan The Man, After Dan The Sad Man
Danny won for the second week on the run. However, he had a very slow start bemoaning the fact that he had “nothing to offer them” to make a sale. No discounts, no offers - nothing.
Does that mean that Dan has to have discounts to make his sales? Does it mean that he can’t be “proud” of the prices and sell the value?

Maybe.

This was evident when he deliberately went in 2k over the price with one prospect to be knocked down by the 2k to get the deal. Sure, he said the customer was happy and most likely they were but I’d have thought he was taking the p1ss out of me if he could reduce the amount by 2k at the drop of the hat.

Did he use this tactic to win? Is it in keeping with the West Yorkshire Windows philosophy of “no push, no hard sell?” Andrew, WYW - What do you say? Reply to the blog below.

Make It Happen
Scott gets some stick but he lead the way for the cold calling campaign. He looked at the sales situation in the showroom and then made something happen. He made 250 calls in one day and started to close down some of the leads. Then, all of the other sales people jumped on the bandwagon and made the calls too.

There is GOLD just sitting there in your leads database. Sometimes getting a “NO” actually means “NO, NOT YET” so you should work all of the names and numbers on your list of those people who have made enquiries.

I think the company will start to use this process from now on - or they should anyhow.

The Joker
Gavin’s too friendly and nice. There comes a time when being a friend needs to turn into being a supplier.

I don’t like the hard sell approach but their is a soft sell and then there is the Gavin “Let’s make a joke out of everything” soft sell.

That’s not for me, it would annoy the hell out of me.

Positioning Is Important
Anna Marie is not a “typical looking” salesperson and she uses this to her advantage. In an industry that is viewed with a little mistrust she can excel with this viewpoint by positioning herself as “not a typical salesperson”.

It’s a great selling point. Just imagine that a prospect has seen 3 pushy sales people and then Anna Marie walks in and says “I bet you’ve seen some really hard sell salespeople so far, well I’m not like that….” now if the prospect feels this way they are in Anna Marie’s web!

Now, I’m not saying that she uses this approach but she can sure slip under the radar.

Prospects like real people and Anna Marie falls into this category.

Happy Selling!

Sean
PS Well done West Yorkshire Windows - I think you came out of the show looking good as a firm full of integrity.

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

Natural Born Sellers - The ITV’s answer to The Apprentice?

Click here for my comments on Episode V

Click here for my comments on Episode IV 

Click here for my comments on Natural Born Sellers Episode III

Stop Press - for my comments on Episode II click here: Natural Born Sellers II 

It was more like the "Diet Coke Of The Apprentice" or "The Low Fat Spread Of The Apprentice" as Dr Evil would say! Now I know loads of people will whine "But it’s not supposed to be like The Apprentice" and I’ll reply back with "Bull - there are too similarities and which show came first?"

Don’t get me wrong, another time and another place and this show would be a huge hit and although I enjoyed watching it, I still had the feeling as if it was after the Lord Mayor’s Show somewhat. I also think it will do well to remain on ITV 1 for the full 6 weeks but time will tell and I have been wrong once before.

So what is the concept of the show?

Well 8 sales people battle it out to earn as much commission as possible over 6 weeks working at a variety of different companies with a 6 figure prize at stake. Each week there is a "TOP DOG" who has to vote off one of the bottom two earners in commission.

So here are my thoughts on show 1… IDEAL HOMES FURNITURE STORE The show started off introducing a super confident 25 year old called Scott who made me cringe a little with his intro.

There’s a fine line between feeling confident on the inside but coming across as arrogant and Scott has this problem. Two frightened pensioners looked like rabbits in the headlights as they were being bulldozered into the sale - what would he have been like if the cameras were not there I wondered?

Sure, he made the sale. But was it out of skill or intimidation? Would those same people come back again for anything else? Scott was then pulled up for being late and blagged the Sales Manager Andy.

He then ratted on one of his fellow sales team - overall he is the type of stereotypical gum chewing wide boy who thinks he’s Tom Cruise out of Cocktail or Maverick from Top Gun! He did make a huge blunder when out in the car park trying to coax buyers in. He approached a couple who said "We’ve already been in the store and couldn’t find what we wanted" and he just let them walk on by. He should have offered to help them look and take them back in the store - you can’t sell chairs standing next to a Wheely Bin in the car park me ole China!

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Carrying on with the "Let’s beat up Scott theme" - sorry mate but you had it coming and you’ve got broad shoulders - when the Sales Manager gave him some feedback he just did not want to listen "I just want to hear positives" he said.

Well guess what?

Sales is a profession where you will "fail" 70% of the time so you’d better get used to bad news and learning from your mistakes is the only way you will learn.

I loved Scott’s positive mental attitude by the way - this should not be tempered and there is no doubt he can sell, this is not in question - what is in question is the way he sells. I believe he has enough raw material to earn 500k per year as a sales person if he could channel his skills and sales approach in the right direction. My God, I’m sounding like a Jedi Master!

Moving onto to some of the other "Natural Born Sellers"… I liked Danny. I’d employ him. Down to earth and he listened to his customers, focussing on building rapport rather than being a smart $%£^! Thea - "I’m used to sophisticated sales"

Yeah right.

If flashing your nellies and low cut tops help you to close "sophisticated sales" then Jordan could make a mint selling top of the range linux servers. Now let me think of some of the other words of wisdom I can pass onto my sales trainers from Thea for the next time we are delivering a session: "Sex Sells" "It’s an advantage to be good looking" "It’s important to be sultry and easy on the eye" "Selling is like romancing someone - you don’t go to the tiolet half way through chatting someone up"

They are real killers aren’t they?!

Another NO NO in my book was the following line that a chap called Leighton made to some customers: "I don’t mind if you say no, there are plenty of other customers that will say yes" Yup, that must have made your prospects feel real special! Come on! What 1980’s book did he get that from?

Gavin made me laugh when he said "I’ve got the fire in me today" with all of the passion of a wet lettuce. He wasn’t convincing me!

And whatever happened to Anna-Marie? Who? Yes, she was a contestant too but we never heard her name once after the intros. That must mean that she wins it!

So Danny was crowned TOP DOG after the first week and good on ya Dan but probably the winner of the show was IDEAL HOMES FURNITURE STORE who dispelled the myths of hard selling in furniture stores with a philosophy of "Trust and Integrity" said by their Sales Manager Andy.

So there were winners and losers but was everyone being themselves? Are some out for fame at the expense of their sales careers? After all, this is a reality TV show where you never quite know whether people are being the real them or not…

So it’s onwards and upwards to Wakefield where West Yorkshire Windows will be the host for the next episode.

Sean

PS If you’re wondering why I have not mentioned Nick who got fired, in my book he would have been fired on day 1 for turning up late!

Enough said.

Sean McPheat

The UK’s #1 Authority On Sales Success

MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

Want to sell properly?

Sign up to receive my FREE weekly sales tips. Just click on the link below and I’ll also send you 20 FREE sales improvement audios as a bonus:

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Natural Born Sellers

Click here for my comments on Natural Born Sellers Episode III

Stop Press - for my comments on Episode II click here: Natural Born Sellers II

Make sure that you sign up in the top right hand corner of my webpage for regular Natural Born Sellers blog updates.

I’m going to be pulling no punches when commenting on the sales tactics used by the participants - good and bad.

I’ll also be commenting on the companies involved too and what they are doing well and what they could be doing better to make more sales so watch this space!

Natural Born Sellers will be avid viewing I’m sure!

Make sure that you don’t miss the show every Thursday at 9:00pm and also my comments on a Friday morning.

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732