Brent Hoberman calls it luck, but is it more like serendipity that turned him into a multi-millionaire?

I confess I had to look up the definition to be sure I was clear on the distinction and serendipity means: “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident”.

Luck is something desirable I believe that happens to people when they aren’t looking. Serendipity actually needs something to nudge it along. And the latter is what happened to Brent.

In 1998 Brent was the joint founder of a fledgling web site called Lastminute.com. You may have heard of the business even if you have not heard of the man. But he does not care because he reportedly pocketed £26m from the £1/2bn sale of the company in 2005.

But back to the serendipity thing. Why do I mention that in conjunction with Brent’s name. In a 600-strong Ecademy meeting in London recently he mentioned as an aside how he managed to raise the money to help start his first online venture, Lastminute.com. And it was all down to the wrong number.

In short, he called directory enquiries asking for a recruitment company because he wanted additional staff. However, its name was cunningly similar (well two of the 3 words in the name were similar) to another company.

The “wrong” company happened to be a venture capital firm. But Brent only realised this after he had explained in detail to the person that answered the phone that he had this great idea for a new web site that needed some new people. Of course, the company invested and the rest is history.

However the detail of the story is more interesting. Brent relates the story such that he had a scrap of paper in his wallet that he had been keeping for years just in case he need to either get a job or find people. And, the other detail is that he understood the investment community as a result of his series of consulting roles. What is more, the scrap of paper did not have a phone number on it, just a postal address. But that did not put off Brent.

And the other thing that is easy to overlook is the years of failures of business ideas that led to Lastminute.com. And his persistence with the idea for an online travel brokerage and the passion with which he pursued it single-mindedly before the company was even formed. And then how his firm lost 95% of its share value shortly after flotation, because the dotcom bubble burst dramatically at the turn of the century.

So, lets look at it again. Is Brent LUCKY to have netted his £26m? Or is there serendipity there, illustrated by the directory enquiries story?

We need to lay the seeds of our success as sales people. We cannot moan that luck/serendipity fails to come knocking if we are not out there tramping in fertile ground. For so long we can plug away at leads, going through trade directories, attending meetings with little success. But, put simply, the more opportunities you create around you, the more business you will harvest.

Even Tesco in their new TV ad seem to be trying to bring on the “r” word: “we know that money is tight right now..” or words to that effect says the voice over.

It is maddening for anyone involved in new business generation to hear this, isn’t it? We know how fragile is “confidence” at the best of times. Telling us that it is bad, is going to make us all tighten our belts even if times are NOT tight! So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

On top of that, we are coming into the Summer months. Another notorious period for sales people to generate new business. But it REALLY is all in our minds.

And here is the point for sales people: any that succumb to this malaise end up convincing themselves that it is a tough market right ow. That is a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure. “If you think times are tough, you are right. If you think times are good.. you are right”.

In our telemarketing operation we frequently hear the objection from prospects: “but it is not a good time right now, is it?”. But they say this several weeks either side of Christmas, around Easter, at any random school holiday, through the whole of summer, during Hannukah, Eid, and their fourth cousin’s birthday. So that would leave three and a half weeks each year that maybe were prime telemarketing times!

It is a given among experienced business people that those businesses that keep marketing hard (if not harder) during the tough times, come out the other side even stronger than their reticent competitors.

So don’t fall for this irrelevant tale about recession or allegations that no-one is around during the summer. Keep plugging away with the cold calls, marketing campaigns and customer account visits and you will soon be top of the heap. Even in a recession. To paraphrase Robert Schuller in his book: “Tough times don’t last, tough people do”.

How infuriating is it when sales people withhold critical information from you? Minor things like the price!

I confess that I was taught many years ago to use the “mystery approach” when selling. This meant that you said very little about the product or service until you were in front of the prospect.

This is great for low value sales where there is a preconception about the product or service. However, I hear it taught and see it applied all over the place. For higher value sales, it is just not appropriate.

I recently took a great telemarketing call (no oxymoron intended!) from an experienced salesman that immediately disarmed me: “This is Bill, you don’t know me but I am making this cold call because my list says you are a prime candidate for xyz.” As it happens, the list was wrong, but the next couple of sentences were humble, matter of fact and gave me opportunities to exclude myself. How refreshing.

In contrast, I get calls asking to speak to Mr Andy Szrezbeni. Putting aside my annoyance at people making little attempt to pronounce my name even vaguely correctly, I ask what it is about. Because the telemarketer has clearly been told not to speak to anyone but the decision maker, a circular discussion ensues where I refuse to answer their question and they refuse to answer my question – “what is it about?”.

A&P Sales Training is frequently praised for being open about our daily rate for sales training when we pitch. It is not always the same rate because we bespoke the content and structure but we don’t bury the price.

In fact, in the early stages of an enquiry prospects often ask how much we are. I respond “expensive”. Sometimes the prospect ends the call there and then! At that point I realise that whatever price we were, they will not value our service. Alternatively, some ask “how much?”, I respond, and they are often pleasantly surprised at the value.

If you are proud of your service, you know your prospect and can show the value then tell it as it is. Don’t infuriate prospects by withholding information that you are worried will turn them off. That information will come out eventually and you will have wasted your time if it is something that is a deal-breaker. Respect the prospect, then you are much more likely to have respect returned and win an appointment or sale as a result.

We have been searching for a more emotionally-based model for selling and, in doing so, have come across a wonderful word from Japan – ‘aichaku’. The word is defined as love-fit and refers to the symbiotic love for an object that deserves affection not for what it does but for what it is.

A good example would be the new iPhone. The affection for these devices seems to go way behind the technological limitations. At launch it was heavily criticised by commentators for its poor camera, slow data codecs and small memory. However, ask the consumers and they won’t cite these issues. They will tell you that the interface is to die for! You slide your finger across the vivid screen to get through the menus and the images are beautifully animated.

Speaking to new owners of iPhones, they tend to be not particularly technologically aware. And they are usually sold on the what the device ‘is’ and not what it does. They stroke it, cradle it and caress it. I have scary thoughts sometimes of what happens to these things at night.

Can we make our products or services a little more about what they ‘are’ and how they make people feel. Most prospects buy products based on emotion and justify the purchase later with logic. So it makes sense to first appeal to the hear. However, how often do we try to sell to the head, not to their heart?

Try to sprinkle a little aichaku on your products and services. And the sale should be easier and the referrals might flow.

If new is so scary, why do we crave it? We all want to go and see the latest film, know the latest management techniques, test-drive the latest Audi model or meet our friend’s new partner. But when it comes to doing things differently in our jobs, we seem to run a mile.

I noticed this contrast when in the same week I was training a group of managers and a few days later I attended a half day conference on innovation. Notably three of the 12 in the training group really welcomed all the new ideas we covered. But the remainder ranged from cool to plain obstructive when it came to looking at new ways of working.

A business associate of mine calls it TtWhADI (“twaddy”) – ‘That’s the way we have always done it’. As the old aphorism goes, if you always do what you have always done then you will always get what you have always got.

From observation, those hungry for new sales techniques are the ones that often are the best salespeople. They understand that a new way of working may not necessarily be BETTER than the old way. But it is certainly worth a try. They certainly do not subscribe to TtWhADI.

Conversely, the delegates that want to stick to the old ways, and the businesses that do not seek new ways of doing things – constantly – are the ones that atrophy. Gradually the energetic, curious and hungry individuals and businesses will overtake the dinosaurs. They surpass those that fail to evolve. A business Darwinism, if you will.

New sales ideas are everywhere. We can find them:
Reading trade magazines
Attending conferences in our sector and associated sectors
Brainstorming with other businesspeople at networking events
Reading bulletin boards and online forums
Watching current affairs programmes
Having lunch with people in our sector that we respect

The reality is that the majority of sales ideas are like celluloid. There is a lot more film on the cutting room floor after a movie has been edited than is in the final reel. But you need all that waste to find the quality result.

One of the biggest challenges in telemarketing is dealing with voicemails. The temptation is to say all that you would if you were actually talking to the prospect. Wrong!

The worst voicemail I had was from a business directory company. An aggressive man said, , “I don’t know why you aren’t calling me back but we have been in touch several times about your entry and we need you to let us know what you want us to do”. “Need”! Do I really care what he needs? Certainly not when he adopts the tone that I heard.

One of the most powerful reasons to call back is curiosity. My favourite message says nothing about what we do and I even shorten the company name so the prospect does not get a clear idea of what we do:
“This is Andy from A&P for John. John needs to call back on 0208 666 6666”. That is it! It works 1% of the time. That might sound low but it is a lot better than the virtually zero chance the directory chap’s message had!

A good friend of mine introduced me to a rather clever alternative method. You start to leave the message, say your name and company, and then ask, “Can Bob call back because I need to talk about….” and then you put the phone down at that very point, after the word ‘about’. When the prospect calls back you just explain the line went dead. It just so happens it went dead because you put the phone down, but you are not lying!

Sometimes it is right to NOT pitch, isn’t it? It is so tempting to take any business that falls on your doorstep. Or to pitch for anything your company is qualified to undertake. But sometimes we need to just say “no”.

Why? Because it takes us off our core proposition. Believe me, I know what damage that can cause! In my early days in telecoms we did anything to do with phones. Any in-vehicle communication. Any messaging. And lots more! Eventually we added so many product lines as a result of people asking us to do something that we lost sight of our core proposition. Jack of all trades, expert in none. Eventually I had to refocus the company when people were obviously getting confused about what we did.

That is why A&P is avowedly a sales training company, not a consultancy. I keep telling this to myself and others. Fortunately I know some great sales consultants, some through Ecademy! So I can pass the relevant leads to them.

So when a lead came along for a client that wanted us to train their board directors, to in turn train their reports to sell, it was very tempting. Clearly a big national project. As it happened, it was in a sector in which that we had experience. But, after much agonising, we had to tell the prospect we could not do the job the way they wanted it done.

Put simply, we do not believe their approach will work. Board directors simply cannot be taught to train. And they are not the right people to cascade a new sales system. Not just our conscience but our strategic heads decided against it. I owe a debt of thanks to Antigone of SalesVirtuoso for her wise counsel.

But this job would have taken us off track. If we had won it on the prospect’s terms, it would not have generated more sales. We might have made good money from it, but it would have dragged us into a consultancy role that we did not want.

As it happens they were insistent on their approach of training the directors and we were not invited to the beauty parade (which is always a poor way to find a supplier).

Of course there is always the niggling doubt that one should have just taken the money and run. But, in the long term, any sales person or sales-orientated business is better off keeping its focus and turning away business that is going to cost more than it generates, one way or the other.

In researching the “photocopier excuse” psychological anecdote (seach for Ellen Langer Photocopier if you want to know more!) I came across a wonderful web site that caters to the pedants of the world: unspeak.net.

There is a wonderful post in there about this new word that is being increasingly used in politics - “misspeak” or “misspoke”. The most recent example was yet another Clinton coming up with a misleading explanation (the only reason Chelsea does not contract foot-in-mouth disease is because she keeps her mouth shut it seems!) of an incident that was later proven to be very different.

In Hilary’s case she described going to the former Yugoslavia and coming under sniper fire at the airport. Unfortunately for her the inconvenient truth is that the film footage shows here walking relaxed from the aeroplance chatting calmly to the welcome party on the tarmac on her way into the terminal. Her husband famously gave a different explanation to how he and Monica Lewinsky engaged in political discussions.

So Hilary “misspoke”. In the UK, I think we call that “lying” don’t we? What she said was not an accidental slip of the tongue.

The issue of ethics and what you can and can’t say to prospects comes up frequently in our courses. And delegates think that circumloquating allows them to lie and encourage a customer to buy. The problem is actually not one of ethics in my view. It was not just ethically wrong of Hilary Clinton to misspeak. It was plain stupid. Because she got caught out.

It actually harms the bottom line when salesmen lie. Because the mis-sale will often end up costing more than the profit on several legitimate sales. Just last week a client of ours mentioned to me about a competitor that had sold about 30 navigation devices to a prospect on the basis that the units monitored the connection between a lorry tractor and trailor. Since this was as specific requirement, the client demanded all the units be removed shortly after installation at huge cost to the supplier. An expensive case of mis-speaking, I would argue.

And that is the point. The truth and a lie are each sharp weapons. A lie can certainly bring you down as fast as the truth might cut others down.

When times get tough, sales managers start looking at the numbers. Unfortunately, the key to improving sales results is more about looking at the people than the numbers. All too often, analysis paralysis sets in.

As sales people We start looking at the numbers so hard that we start to see patterns that we convince ourselves are significant. Look! The number of customers in Derbyshire adopting our widget polishing technology is double that of Staffordshire. We need to concentrate our efforts in Staffordshire. In fact, lets model the Staffordshire customers and profile the other counties to see which are most similar….

If the numbers of customers are large enough and one is a truly national business, sure this can throw up some valuable findings. I have friends in marketing that do some great work in this area. However, my experience suggests that this exercise is frequently undertaken by companies that have 2 sales from Staffordshire in the last 2 years and one from Derbyshire. As any professional researcher will tell you, this aint statistically significant.

All too often, this analysis turns into time-consuming navel-gazing. When in fact simply stepping up the work rate combined with a boost to salespeople’s enthusiasm is what is needed.

If you are a one-man business then you will know the feeling. It is so easy to get hung up with the “no”s and analysing them that you can lose sight of the bare facts: 10% more prospecting will make up for 10% lower conversion or 10% more cancelled appointments!When we have a full pipleline and are active processing lots of leads then we forget about the “time wasters” and the cancellations.

In fact, as I write, my PA has passed me a message about my afternoon appointment cancelling. From experience, people that cancel on the day are either genuinely very busy or were never serious. Unless you are psychic, you can’t know. So we give them a chance to rebook but only if they WANT to. I back away and take the pressure off so that they can be self selecting. I certainly don’t want to be rebooking someone that was not serious. Because they will only cancel all over again.

By giving them the option to rebook, it then becomes clear which of the two options they are. I am pleased to say we are really busy right now so a cancellation is mixed blessing - it means I can focus on the rest of the pipeline. And that is my point. If we were quiet, I might start getting in to analysis paralysis and start worrying about where the next sale will be coming from!

I have just had an invoice from another business group of which we are members and I am being force to make hard decisions on renewal by my accountant. A few months ago he said to me “what are all these memberships you are paying for? Do you ever get any business from them?”. What a stupid question I thought, of course I do.

Hang on a minute I thought. Am I REALLY getting business from this membership or that membership? Am I being fooled into thinking that all that activity is the same as results? In fact, this is what I frequently tell delegates – “don’t mistake action for results”.

So I won’t be renewing that membership. In fact, what I have decided to do is to devote more time to more informal networks. For I have discovered it is THESE that are generating money for me.

So why not evaluate your memberships of networking groups if you have several? Analyse them to see which actually generated money. If they did not, consider leaving them. Better to devote time to cold calling or setting up your own group or having lunch with a symbiotic contact. Not only will you feel less obliged, your accountant might not ask you any difficult questions about the membership fees!