I have resisted so far blogging about the Olympics because everyone is probably tired of hearing thoughts on how wonderful it is that the Great Britain team have shown our best performance for one hundred years. But the Beijing Olympics has given us more than blanket coverage of obscure sports such as walking, the Madison and pommel horse. Team GB’s astonishing domination of track cycling also gave us the term “aggregation of marginal gains”: a fantastic concept for improving sales results.

The phrase is attributed to Team GB cycling performance director Dave Brailsford. When asked what was the secret to their phenomenal success, he said there was no one secret. It was down to meticulously attending to 1,000 tiny details, each in itself seemingly insignificant. It is this combination of little secrets – the “aggregation of marginal gains” as he dubbed it, that had given our cyclists their winning edge.

A winning edge that meant that 8 golds out of the 17 won by Team GB were in cycling. To get that into context, if the cycling team were a country, they would be SEVENTH in the medals table (as I write)!

So often when we are not getting the results we want in selling, we resort to some “magic bullet”. We search for a secret that will turn things around.

This is especially true in a downturn in the economy as every sales director in the UK must be experiencing right now. So we look at reducing the workforce and keeping only the best performers. Or maybe we need to recruit new, better and super salespeople. Maybe we need to finally work more closely with the marketing department and that will generate the higher volume of leads that we need.

Any one of these factors MIGHT generate a 30% increase in sales from their current level. But this represents looking for a “secret” that might not exist. Why not take the cycling team’s mantra and try to find 1000 tiny details that we can improve. To get a 30% improvement overall, all we need to do is cumulatively increase the performance of 8 things by 3%. Try it on your calculator 103% times 103%, eight times.

Do you think you can find 8 factors such as hours worked, cold calls made, persistence, leads uncovered, etc that you can each improve by 3%? Of course you can. Then you will have generated a 30% improvement in sales by the theory of aggregation of marginal gains.

Many of our clients have sales people that feel a genuine frustration when prospects don’t buy. Are you like this?

It is perfectly normal to feel a sense of annoyance at losing a deal to a competitor. Sometimes it is even worse when you have spent considerable time and effort putting together a pitch or proposal and then the prospect decides not to proceed! Why did they bother asking everyone to pitch in the first place, salespeople often think?

In some sales environments this attitude of frustration is encouraged. It is seen as an expression of hunger and ambition. However, it can also be destructive.

Many less successful telemarketers get annoyed when a prospect on the phone is rude to them or rejects the sales proposition out of hand. And then the telemarketer is less positive when they make the next call. That is of course sheer folly because the next prospect might be champing at the bit to buy, but the telemarketer’s negative frame of mind affects their tone of voice and the language they use. And they then jeopardise their chances of winning that sale.

It is the same process if you are pitching for larger business via presentations, proposals or sales meetings. And these approaches that don’t lead to business can put us in a negative frame of mind.

A great technique that helps reduce this corrosive effect is this: imagine the prospect was making the best decision with the information they had at the time. In other words, for whatever reason, they TRULY believe that our proposition does not suit them. They are not doing it to annoy us, they really think we aren’t right for them.

First we accept that and then the important second step is to say “if this is the case, then I am responsible”. Yes, you take the blame. But not in a negative way: you analyse the situation and learn from it. Or you accept it and move on.

For example, the client might not choose us because we are “too expensive”. This means they thought the price was high compared to the other proposals they had, for instance. Thus we failed to communicate the value properly, we did not establish that they wanted an economy product that we did not offer, the competition went in as a loss leader, etc. But all these reasons are issues that we either could affect or must accept.

So we don’t get upset, we just move on. We focus on getting the next sale, we don’t dwell on a failure. We analyse the reasons for the customer deciding against us and we put it down to experience.

If we accept our frames of mind are so important in determining our success, the above technique will help us get more customers in time.

So many pitches for new business simply leave the audience cold. They fail to engage and that is why the company pitching does not win the business. That is why someone with no experience of pitching and little experience of running a business can win a major award for the best pitch.

Nicki Steward had spent some 18 years in the stationery sector before deciding to shake up the hamper sector with her new business idea. Her four-minute pitch won “The Pitch” competition from a significant number of entries and the comments of the judges were most revealing.

The head of the panel said that they were impressed with the entrants, “particularly as some were pitching for the first time”. And the winner was commended because she “exhibits the sort of passion and determination required”.

Having worked with lots of people putting together pitches, time and again they fail to convey passion and ensure relevance. Putting aside the issue of ensuring the presentation is relevant and tailored, let’s look at the passion.

It is incredibly difficult for experienced sales people to keep sounding enthusiastic about their offering when they have to keep explaining it day in day out. Maybe the adrenalin, excitement and conviction with the products or services was there in the first few years. Our relative ignorance of the products and competition did not stop us winning the business!

As time goes on, we take the offering for granted. We start to present as if on autopilot. All too often, sales people “go through the motions” when it comes to pitching.

Do we really think the audience do not pick up on our lack of desire? As Nicki Steward illustrates, this passion is infectious and motivates prospects to action.

We need to work consciously on our excitement levels. We need keep it fresh and remind ourselves why our current customers love us. And we need to convey that to our prospects in a pitch. Athletes know that their desire and state of mind before a big race is critical. Sales people pitching need to take a leaf out of their books.

You have done your preparation in advance and you know your subject. Now believe in it and really let your voice know that you want the business. The prospect panel will be captivated by your presentation and they will anchor this positive feeling to your proposal.

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.