Sales Career Tips and Advice

The Sales Apprentice - Tips from the hit TV show

Written By Gavin Ingham

Episode 6

With the words that he was accepting no excuses about not speaking the language SAS set our intrepid Sales Apprentices the task - "take the best of British food products and sell them to the French"! Our teams were to buy their food and sell it from market stalls in an upmarket French town. With a quick balancing out of French speakers and the installation of Lohit and Paul as project managers they were off.

I have to say that I am beginning to wonder where the class is in this show as today's fiasco was more like watching a car crash in slow motion than a serious business show....

Lohit and Paul both dived into organising their Sales teams and discussing products which they could sell. Many of their team members spoke French yet seemed to have no concept of what the French eat or how they behave. No-one seemed to be considering the customers that they were going to be selling to. Not one bit. Maybe we didn't see it but surely someone should have got on the internet and researched this market town that they were going to be selling in? Are they never going to learn my number one sales training lesson of this series so far, know your customers?!

Researching your sales market and your prospects is critical for Sales success. With the resources on hand on the internet today there is no excuse for not doing this!

Do you research your prospects properly?

On Lohit's team they quickly came up with the theme of a British breakfast s ale with smoked fish, marmalade and tea. Upmarket Scottish salmon is respected around the world so that was a good choice, as was British marmalade but their final choice, tea, was an odd one! Have they not seen Renault's Nicole say "café" to the British man's "tea"?!

In any case, they were going to get no competition from Paul on the products front. Sausages were the only thing that his team could agree on with Paul suggesting cheese. Kristina, quite rightly, said that the "French are cheese connoisseurs" and she didn't think this was such a good idea. I'll say. True to form Paul ignored this advice and bought slabs and slabs of processed cheese, from Makro. He deserved firing for this act of folly alone! From this point they were doomed to fail!

Clearly not wanting to make this his most stupid act of the show Paul was determined to go out in style spending £5 on some sort of Heath Robinson contraption to cook the sausages when he could have had a small BBQ for a mere tenner. Despite the fact that he spent £741 in total, clearly this economy was worthwhile!

Sales training lesson: Skimping on required Sales tools, training or support will not pay off in the long run.

Paul had asked Adam to organise a banner for the stall for under £50. Arriving hours late at the print shop they found the banner printed and were told that it was £140. The print shop manager did a good job of demonstrating that the customer is always wrong and was quite argumentative with them! What is it that being on TV seems to do to people?

We never got to the bottom of whether Mr Print had the go ahead to print it or not but given that he later said that they could leave with nothing and pay nothing I would suggest that he conceded that he hadn't had full authorisation.

There were some good sales training tips on dealing with sales negotiations however:

Adam: "Is there something we can do to get this inside our budget?"

Ok, fair enough. He's right that he needs to negotiate but firstly this is a closed question that can so easily be answered with a "No" and secondly, you need to negotiate from strength not weakness. Why does he think the client would care about his budget?

Despite this Mr Print said, "£110." Now that shows the power of asking! A £40 drop, for nothing! I wouldn't have given it him off that question!

Adam: "Is there something else we can do?"

Another closed question.

Mr Print: "No. Take it or leave it."

We later found out that Adam got the banner for much less than this (£57 +VAT?).

How?

I suspect because of something called a BATNA - best alternative to a negotiated agreement. A BATNA is what happens when the deal is not agreed and both parties have to walk away. It compares the relative situations of each individual to see who is in the best position if you walk away. In this case, Mr Print would be stuck with a useless sign that he could not sell and that he had already put the work into. Adam would have no sign but would still have his cash to do something else with. Adam was in by far the strongest position. It's a shame that we didn't see anything other than the swaggering headline comments of Mr Print and Adam as I would have loved to have seen the real negotiation!

Sales training tip: Always know your BATNA and work to ensure that your BATNA is as strong as possible. Having a strong BATNA increases your "power" when negotiating and reduces your temptation to cave in to threats i.e. "Take it or leave it".

On the ferry to France Paul was singing the praises of his quality products. He really does remind me a little of that Harry Enfield character, Tim nice but Dim! He certainly doesn't seem to have any "common". I know people who are officers in the army (which he used to be) and they eat some fantastic meals.

They are also well travelled and quite cultured. Surely he did not really believe that his processed cheese was going to sell in France or indeed that it was, as he kept insisting, quality cheese!

Paul's team weren't making many Sales particularly due to the fact that his Heath Robinson "cooker" was not working at all.

Lohit's produce, however, was selling well. All accept the tea.

Ahh well, you cannot win them all.

Kristina really started to show her mettle this week standing up to Paul and asking some insightful questions. She was the first to point out that he went off "selling" with Katie but came back having s old 10 packets of sausages at cost... and having thrown in something that looked like a huge black pudding for f ree! She also went and persuaded a local restaurant to let her cook some sample sausages to boost their sales efforts. After which they did start to sell.

Whilst Katie and Paul virtually held hands Adam was plugging away selling chutney. He will probably go soon as they all seem to have it in for him but I really quite like the way he just gets on with it. For sure, he's a little on the negative side at times but who wouldn't be surrounded by this chaos.

In the boardroom Lohit's team pronounced him a good leader. So did Pauls's bar Kristina who said that he wasn't. Lohit's team had spent £446 and made £410 profit. Paul's team spent £741 and lost £225.84. A staggering defeat and, shrieked SAS, a loss!

Paul uttered the comment of the week: "We went for it and had we shifted it we would have annihilated them. They played it safe"

No Paul. You bought too much of the wrong product, you didn't listen to anyone again, you spent the day "swanning" around with Katie and you ignored the only member of your team prepared to speak sense, Kristina. The other team knew that selling British food to the French would be difficult and bought sensibly.

Paul decided to take Adam and Kristina back to the boardroom. Bringing Kristina back was suicide. I felt sorry for Adam. If he gets taken to the boardroom next week he will probably go. Fortunately this week there could only be one loser...

Paul, you're fired.

I said a couple of weeks ago that EGO will kill your Sales results. Well so does its big brother, Arrogance. Arrogance comes in all shapes and forms and Katie and Paul seem to have it in bucket-loads. Arrogance blinds you to common sense. Arrogance hides the truth from you. Arrogance closes you off to feedback. Arrogance stunts sales development. Arrogance ultimately destroys Sales. I wanted Paul and his Arrogance to go weeks ago and I'd like Katie to go soon too. Paul could not admit he was wrong and neither can she.

Sales training tip: You can only ever improve your selling skills by getting over your Arrogance, taking feedback on board and allowing yourself to grow.

On being asked why the task failed Katie was sure of the reasons. It was all Adam and Kristina's fault:

1. Too high costs. It was ridiculous that Adam spent £150 on a banner. Wrong. Sure Adam spent too much but he then negotiated down to £85 (!) and that was nothing to what your "friend" Paul spent on processed cheese.

2. Bad team behaviours. Kristina was difficult.

No, she wasn't. She was spot on. Someone asked me last week who I think could go all the way. I didn't want to stick my neck out then but I'm going to now... I think Kristina could. She has to be my "favourite" at the moment.

3. No sizzling sausages.

Now I wonder who bought the silly contraption...?

So not Adam and Kristina's fault at all then Katie! Paul's.

Katie said that she wouldn't like Paul to go. He was the only intelligent conversation in the house that otherwise was like a crèche (I think that was her terminology). Maybe Katie and Paul are bright (degrees etc) but neither of them come across as having any business savvy.

If there's a sales training lesson to be learnt from this sorry affair it's this:

Self-belief and belief in your product are essential for Sales success. This is not the same as Arrogance. It's easy to confuse Arrogance with self-belief and they may appear to be similar traits but they are not.

Belief builds sales, Arrogance destroys them.

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