During the past 2 weeks my wife and I have had about 6 different conservatory companies around our house giving us quotes.

The standards of salesmanship have been appalling to be honest.

The two biggest problems that they had was: (and please avoid these yourself!)

1. Not qualifying me up front

One guy had DVD’s, a slick presentation, “salesmans patter” etc etc He went on and on and I let him until after 1 hour he “revealed” the price which was over twice the amount I had in my mind.

He’d just wasted an hour of his valuable prospecting time and more importantly my wife had missed Eastenders! (drat!)

Lesson: Qualifiy up front!

Sure, I could have gone a little higher if I’d have seen the value in it. But over twice my budget is a different ballpark altogether!

2. Talking features not benefits

SALESMAN:
“I’d recommend that because you’ve got a south facing garden that you have an electric ridgeflow as well…”

Keh?

Me no understand!

So what!

What does it mean to me!

The salesman probably fell into one of the most common faults a lot of salespeople have. They are so close to the product and service that they expect me to know what an “electric ridgeflow” actually is!

Well, I didn’t have a scooby doo!

Now when covering features make sure that you actually tell the prospect what it means to them.

Never assume that they’ll be able to work it out for themselves. Instead you need to tell them!

So when you’ve covered a feature follow it up with something like:

“What this means to you is that when the temperature reaches 90 degrees at the top of the conservatory that the hot air gets sucked out which keeps it cool whether you are in there or not. You mentioned that you want the room as a playroom for Holly? Well, with a south facing garden you’re going to get the sun all day and that means that Holly can play in there and you don’t need to worry that she’s too hot…”

Lesson: Tell your prospects what things mean!

So there you have two, fundamentally basic but very valuable lessons. Two lessons that you think are just plain old common sense.

But when was ever common sense, common practice!

Happy selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
The Sales Jedi
MTD Sales Blog

MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

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If you’re a subscriber to the “under promise and over deliver” philosophy then you’ll probably not survive in sales for too long.

I’ve read so many books that say you must under promise and then over deliver and I just shake my head at every single one!

Here’s why:

1. If you under promise you’ll most likely not win the business in the first place because prospects today want to be “surprised” and “excited” by what you offer

2. The modern day buyer can sniff out when you’re not “offering the best you can”

3. You should accurately promise and then try your very best to over deliver far above that promise

4. Your clients and prospects have very high expectations so you continually need to raise the bar

5. The modern day buyer is fully aware of the under promise and over deliver approach so they will know when you’re trying it on!

Overall, we need to raise the standards of sales professionalism worldwide. By “under promising” means we are not doing the best possible job we can for our clients.

Instead, we need to work with our prospects and clients to accurately determine what we can do and then strive to over deliver on that promise.

Happy selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
The Sales Jedi
MTD Sales Blog

MTD Sales Training

Telephone: 0800 849 6732

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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Truth in Selling

There is a big difference between what’s legal and what’s right. As professional sales people, we must hold integrity above all else, including the letter of the law. Honesty is key, misleading, deliberately confusing and bamboozling sales advertising, literature and talk is no more acceptable today than the old school smile and dial rhetoric of the past.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

A new car dealer was using this misleading statement: “Bankruptcy Sale”

Bank Owned Cars Must Go!

Over 300 Bank Reprocessed vehicles for sale to the public!

All Must Go!

Now, when you look at that, do you get the feeling the bank has repossessed cars from some unfortunate people who failed to make their payments and sold them on to the garage for profit and now the garage is off loading them at hugely discounted prices?

Well, look again and you may notice that it doesn’t say “repossessed;” it says reprocessed! I asked the owner what that meant, and he had no answer. Especially since the cars in question (only about 150) had all been on the forecourt for months. Also, what and who is the “bankruptcy” what’s that all about?

The owner, in an effort to defend himself, informed me that the ad was perfectly legal, to which of course I (quite emphatically) let him know that it wasn’t.

Let’s continue to restore the integrity in our profession by ensuring truth in advertising, honesty in selling and let’s finally put the BS to R.I.P!

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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Hi there – something a little lighter for you…

This clip is funny!

The Truth In Ad Sales is a spoof set of ad sales, the buzz words and what staff are really thinking!

So you’ll want to watch this ASAP to make sure you get an ROI, OK? – You’ll see what I mean when you watch it!

Is this like your office?

If I had a pound for everytime I’ve seen this kind of thing…

Happy Selling!

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

Looking for sales training? Try MTD!

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…

1 minute, 22 seconds!

That’s how long a voicemail message was for me that I picked up last Friday!

And yes it was from a sales person too.

“Hi Mr McPheat, this is Jo Smith from ABC. Sean, we offer…”

And the sales call went on and on and on.

It ended something like “Sean, so if you’re interested please call me back on…”

Yeah right!

This is awful prospecting.

You see, when you make a telesales call and get through to voicemail you’ve got two options:

1. To hang up
or
2. Leave a message

Now if you leave a message all you should be doing is to “SELL THE CALLBACK”

You should not be going into a long winded “We do this, I called for that” etc

Instead, you should just “SELL THE CALLBACK”

So, how do you do this?

Well, my favourite is to say something like this:

“Hi Sean, this is Jo from ABC. Could you give me a quick call please with reference to XYZ Industries? My number is 33333333. Thanks a lot Sean”

Now, XYZ is a company that ABC would be familiar with or do business with or that you do business with – it must have some sort of connection.

When they call back you say “Thanks for returning my call Sean. XYZ have just taken out a full page ad with us and I just wanted to give you a call to see if there were any synergies between our companies too?”

Notice I have not used the words “Would you be interested in advertising etc”

You’ll get the majority of your voicemails returned if you use this approach.

Hope this is useful to you? Remember, there has to be a company connection if you’re going to use this approach.

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

PS
As well as sales training for your staff we also offer sales coaching and sales management training too!

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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Phew, what a scorcher today was!

So we decided to go to our local garden centre to have a wonder around and we ended up in the conservatory section!

My 2 year old daughter and I were looking at some plants and I look around and find my wife talking to a salesman about a conservatory. I wish I could sell to my wife!

Anyhow, I make a sharp dash over to join her before she sells the family jewellery and to my amazement they are talking figures!

GULP

To my surprise when I walk into the “showhome conservatory” I am hit by the heat. I could hardly breathe and my daughter starts to get uncomfortable. It was seriously hot. I had a major dab on!

Forcing my way into the negotiation part of the proceedings I ask “So are all of your conservatories as stuffy as this?”

The salesperson replied “Oh no sir. Yours would be a lot cooler”

“Why?” I replied “If you are trying to sell these at 15k a pop for the size we wanted why would the one on show be worse than the one we would buy?”

The salesperson was stumped.

Sales are made based on emotion backed up with logic. If I’d have walked into the showroom to find a very cool, inviting conservatory then I’d have felt good because it was 30 degrees outside. It would have stirred an emotion and the odds of me buying would have gone up considerably.

The fact that I was not impressed with the heat inside the room, the fact that I was sweating as the salesperson was talking to me did not give me a great feeling.

“Would you like to put down a deposit sir” he asked

“No, I’ll think about it” I replied

How many of your prospects say that to you?

The fact is, I didn’t trust what the salesperson was saying through my experience and I needed to find out more information. I need to find out:

1. Are they all as hot as that?
2. Was it just that brand that was boiling?
3. What else is out there?

The conditions that the salesperson had to work in were awful. It would have been like a sales person selling a freezer only to get an ice-cream from it that was nearly all melted.

Not good.

Set yourself up for selling in the right way. Our sales training would never have allowed all of the mistakes to happen and at 15k price just image how much lost revenue that company is experiencing?

Happy Selling!

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training International

Telephone:
0800 849 6732

Website:
www.mtdsalestraining.com

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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Hi All,

Corrielle, my PA just received a call from a “Michael from Zoo” trying to sell us some meeting software I think because the sales call was that bad I couldn’t really tell you what he was offering. (BTW I was listening in on the call when after my PA motioned to me that I would love to hear what was going on!)

Let me tell you about how awful this sales person was.

The opening:
“Can I speak with Sean McPheat. A sales director or a gatekeeper will do as well”

What? This was awful!!!

He was arrogant and upon some resistance actually admitted he was arrogant!

“Do you mind if I am arrogant? I would hate to have go to one of your competitors and for them to get the edge over MTD with this product”

What?

How 1970’s was that line!

My PA is an awesome gatekeeper and she told the salesperson that old outdated sales techniques were useless!

“Okay, I’ll try another approach” he ended the call with.

Appalling!

Please, please, please DO NOT USE these selling tactics – they will ruin your business.

Use professional sales tactics, be warm, friendly and have my best interests at heart and you will have a good chance!

Sean Mc

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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I love analysing sales people at work especially when someone tries to sell to me as I know exactly what is coming next!

One particular instance happened when we moved premises into the prestigous Business Innovation Centre that is part of the new Univeristy of Warwick development.

If you haven’t seen a picture of our premises yet please click here.

Anyhow, I wanted to give the office a makeover so I decided that for the new move we would purchase brand new furniture

I rang around personally to negotiate prices whilst some of my trainers listened in to the call as part of their development.

I ended up with a list of prices that all of these companies would “do for me”.

I then left it.

The following couple of days our office received call after call after call from salesman asking for me. They knew that this was a big deal and they knew that I was the decision-maker.

I played hard to get.

I then got one of my assistants to call each one back to say “Sean has narrowed his supplier search down to three firms, and he is interested in your product, is that the best price that you can do?

That’s it. I told her to say nothing more as I sat next to her whilst she was making the calls. I told her to say very little else and enjoy the silence!

What happened next?

Well, we received a further 10, 12.5 and 15 percent reductions in price!

The truth of the matter was that the salespeople were very poor and yes I screwed them completely.

As a prospect I was in-fact happy with the prices I had negotiated in the first place so to get an additional 15 percent was incredible.

But, all I was interested in was quality and not one sales person talked about quality and WHAT I WANTED and WHAT WAS IMPORTANT TO ME.

Instead I “smoke screened” them with the “best price” reply.

The reason why I say this is because your suppliers will try to screw you too so you need to be careful.

Here are some lessons from this encounter:

* Ask better quality questions up-stream to learn what is MOST important to the prospect. Just because they ask for discount don’t think that this is their main purchasing criteria.

I actually decided to go with a company a little more expensive than all of them who offered a superior product!

* Understand that your prospects will try to “play you off” against your competitors.

Knowing this, you do not have to jump through all of the hoops that they put in front of you. Sometimes its a game of bluff and double bluff.

Maybe that’s why I always clean up at our annual office Poker tournament?!

* Hold firm in your beliefs about the quality of your product.

Don’t discount it just because you may lose the business.

* Be prepared to walk away if the price is not right. A sale needs to be win win situation.

As always if you would like me or any of my team to come in and talk to you about how we could help your company, please do not hesitate to reply to this email and we’ll set something up.

We specialise in helping small and medium sized businesses as well as large organisations so just drop me a line – you are never too large or too small to improve your bottom line!

Sean Mc

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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Having been brought up in the industrial city of Coventry, the football team has always held a soft spot in my heart, even though there are times when I delve into the deepest of despair with their performances. Living many miles away from the city means my visits are most infrequent, but when I do make it back there, I sometimes catch a game.

And so it was that on one chilly October evening, I happened to find myself ensconced in a blue plastic seat, watching my ‘heroes’ take on Watford, a team 14 places above them in the league table. Of course, that wasn’t going to put us off, and, like all supporters of a team, I started with hope in the heart and wishes in my head. Alas, one of the poorest performances of the season saw my beloved team succumb by three goals to nil. At home. On a cold night. With only one shot at goal that could be remembered. Oh, well, I thought, better luck next time.

Then a very enthusiastic stadium announcer clicked on his microphone just as 17,000 disgruntled fans were milling their way sadly home. The irony of his comments were noted by fans surrounding me…”Don’t forget” he said, without a hint of sarcasm, “we will no doubt be seeing you all for our next home game on Saturday. Remember, it’s only £10 a ticket to see YOUR team!”

The sarcastic laughs around me made it obvious that those comments were not the most welcome. The general mood was pessimistic and unforgiving of a particularly poor performance by THEIR team.

I wondered what the response would be just four days later when the same team played again. I read the score and the report on the Saturday evening. Should I have been surprised to see that the attendance was over 23,000? Perhaps not. No doubt the discounted price had something to do with the increased crowd numbers.

But I also can’t help thinking that thousands of supporters who had been moaning, groaning and booing their team just four days earlier had also turned up at the next game. What is interesting is how our allegiances and loyalties rarely die, even though the embarrassment of a defeat lives long in the memory (well, at least 24 hours, anyway!)

It makes me think that, in business, some of the things we say and do stick in the memory for a long time, and many other things just fade and die away. Our loyalty to a company may not be very high these days, but we still stick with them, for a myriad of reasons. We have so many choices these days that it is difficult to stay loyal to a company for long before you see or hear of something better with someone else.

If you have customers, do you know what keeps them loyal? Have you asked them? What would make them walk away from you? Or are they fickle enough to leave for a small reason like ‘lower price’? My friend knows someone who drives more than 6 miles to a petrol station so he can save 1p per litre on fuel. That ‘duh’ type of loyalty doesn’t make sense to most people, but it would make sense to the person who drives that distance. We can always rationalise our emotional decisions, but when was the last time you found out specifically what makes your customers loyal?

Try asking them. And then do your best to meet and exceed those expectations.

There are some people, like die-hard footy fans, who would NEVER give up their allegiance, no matter how they felt about their team. Would you be able to buy that kind of loyalty? No, but you could find out what makes them choose to be loyal. Don’t let them walk away without you knowing why.

And, by the way, the next time I’m in the Midlands, I might just slide along to the Ricoh and see how the lads are doing. It’s in the blood, you know!

Thanks awfully,

Mark Williams

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

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10 top tips to become the worst sales person in your company!

Have you ever had sales people who just never seem to make it no matter how hard they try? These sales people are one of the main factors for decline in business. Your sales people are the heart of your company and without good ones you will find it difficult to succeed in selling your products. To train good sales people you sometimes need to take a different approach.

Here are 10 tips that will save you from becoming the worst sales person in the company:

1. Not being punctual: being on time is very important to a customer. Take into consideration that many of your seasonal Christmas customers will be new. Your sales people will represent the first contact these customers have with your company. First impressions are lasting ones and your sales person need to make a good impression.  Being on time will give a good impression to the client and increase their confidence in your company.

2. Poor presentation: some sales people just do not have all their ducks in a row and simply do not present the product well. A presentation is the first thing a customer will know about your product. If your product is not shown correctly to the customer he is very unlikely to buy.

3. Bad attitude: rudeness and unprofessional behavior is not acceptable under any circumstances. It is quite surprising that you will meet some sales people who are just plain rude and short with you the consumer. This gives the potential buyer the wrong impression about your company. They do not get a proper picture of the product, as they will probably not even wait for the presentation to end. You will lose many sales like this. 

4. Not being articulate: a sales person must know how to express himself with confidence and fluency. He needs to be able to greet the prospect and introduce himself with assurance. This will start the whole presentation off to a good start. When he actually presents the product he must be sure to do this in a confident manner. He should also be prepared to answer all questions concisely and well. If your sales person cannot do this, your sale will not go through.

5. Not listening to a customer: a sales person should not only be able to present your product but listen to the prospective buyer. There is nothing more irritating to the consumer than having a sales person go on about a product and not letting you ask a few simple questions. After all whose money is on the line here? Worse still is when you do finally get to ask your question and instead of giving you a straight answer they go off on a tangent and have clearly not been listening to you. This will make a customer angry and they will probably never do business with you.

6. Basing a sale on cost: it is extremely risky for a sales person to depend on cost to close the sales. The prospective buyer will be quick to take advantage when he sees that the deal depends on the cost factor. He will drive the price as low as he can and you will take a heavy cut in profits for the sake of a sale. The buyer may hold off and then not even buy.

7. Not knowing when to close a sale: This is a common fault but a lethal one. Many sales have been lost because the sales person did not know when to close the sale. A good sales person is in tune with the prospective buyer and knows instinctively when to move to close the sale.

8. Hard sell: Hard sell is when sales people try to push the sale on the prospective customer. This will make the buyer aggressive and he will try to get rid of your sales person as soon as possible. It is a proven fact that nobody likes to be sold to.

9. Inflexibility: a sales person should be aware of different personalities and various situations. They must be flexible and able to adapt to different circumstances. The presentation may be the same but the buyers are rarely the same. Each buyer wants to feel special and expects the sales person to understand his circumstances. Inflexibility will cost you many sales. 

10. Not following up a hot prospect: Follow up is very important. It is actually plain good manners. You have spoken to a person who has expressed interest in your company’s product but may not have been able to make a decision yet. It is courteous and good for business to follow up with hem. You may even make a sale this way. If your sales person does not know how to do this you will end up losing valuable customers and sales.

Sean Mc

Have you downloaded my latest report yet? “The Sales Person’s Crisis” has been downloaded by over 10,000 sales pros and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss this unique report that lifts the lid on modern day selling!

Click on the image below to find out why you’re very existence as a sales person is in doubt…