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

Piccolo Teatro - the next Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare!

….and what a nightmare it was too!

Bad management can ruin a business and when that bad management comes from the owner then you are really in the crap!

Piccolo Teatro was a vegetarian restaurant in Paris. But the adage of “build it and they will come” does not work!

Gordon and the team went out onto the streets with a little help from some can-can girls to drum up business and create a buzz around the streets of Paris. As a business owner you need to market your services effectively.

The biggest problem with Piccolo Teatro was the owner Rachel - she was lazy, uninterested and did not have any sense of urgency. She was also waiting on the tables but took no pride in the customer service side of things.

In order to make money in a restaurant you need to run it like a business. Now that may sound obvious but you need to think about the systems you operate, customer service, sales opportunities, sales training, marketing, finance - you name it! You can’t just run it like a hobby when you feel like it.

I was actually writing this blog when the show was on and when Gordon went back the restaurant was closed! I was not shocked though!

Set yourself up for success and the success will come. Piccolo Teatro had bags of potential if run in the right way - the owner had a new talented young chef but the owner was lazy and when your head people have no commitment then you are onto a loser.

Sean Mc
PS Good on you Gordon for giving the young chef the opportunity to work with your team in London - at least you can spot talent!

If you run a shop or are a manager in a retail store then listen up as I’ve got a really good tip for you!

We’ve just completed some retail sales training for a retail store and as part of the training we also looked at their sales processes too.

Now I’m not saying that this sales technique will work for your retail outlet but the results we have had with just one technique has added £13,000 to the turnover of each store!

Within this particular business it was sometimes hard to find what you were looking for so I recommend that everytime someone purchases an item that the person serving should ask “Did you find everything that you were looking for today?”

Want to know the results?

Well, it generated on average an additional 5 sales per day. Now it doesn’t sound a lot as the average additional sales amount came to £7.25 per item but it generated an additional £36.25 per day when annualised came to around £13k! The fact that they have over 30 stores as well means that they were adding an additional £400k turnover just by asking a question at the point of purchase!

Making sales in retail is about working smarter not harder!

Make an enquiry today to see how we can help you improve your sales performance!

Sean Mc

Sales consultancy is an activity that is high on a lot of our client’s agenda.

MTD Sales Training Consultancy

As a company looking to improve your bottom line you should take time out to look at how you do things and the sales systems you have in place.

Everything that you do should support how your client’s purchase from you. This includes your website, your literature, how you approach your clients, your follow ups, the way your back end systems record data - you name it!

As a leading Sales Training Consultancy, MTD can help you with this and we would be delighted to do so but there are certain activities that you can and should be doing yourself.

Here are 10 questions to ask yourself:

- How do our clients make their purchasing decision?

- What is important to our clients?

- When was the last time we asked our existing clients what they think of us and what they need?

- Do all of our sales people know how to “consult” with our clients?

- What CRM system do we use and is it actually helping us or is it a time consuming hinderance?

- Do our sales people have the tools they need to close the deal?

- Do our back office sales support staff know what our sales people do?

- Have we revisited our USP’s in the last 3 months?

- When was the last time we completed a competitor analysis?

- What are our competitor’s strengths and weaknesses?

This should keep you quiet for 5 minutes! Use your answers to make your sales operation more efficient.

By periodically asking yourself the questions above and many others you can become your very own Sales Training Consultancy!

But if you would like MTD to come in and help you with any aspect of your sales, please do not hesitate to make a no obligation enquiry or download our sales training brochure.

Happy consulting!

Sean Mc