Gavin Ingham sales training & personal development Sales training, personal development & business growth for salespeople, business owners & entrepreneurs. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 1 0 6 2701

Articles from Gavin Ingham sales training & personal development

Cold calling howlers, Gavin’s kitchen nightmares! 2007-10-03 18:35:39 Last Friday I was working from home for the day. I had spent the last three days delivering two of my favourite sales seminars, No Fear Cold Calling and Professional Selling Skills, in Manchester, Nottingham and Birmingham. I was working on my forthcoming book No Fear Cold Calling and was determined to not be disturbed when my home phone rang. After a sip of tea I decided to answer the phone just incase it was someone from my family or one of my friends. It wasn’t, it was a cold call. Salesperson: “Hello. This is so and so from Blag & Bodgit Kitchens, how are you today? Me: “OK.” (This is such a lame question. I don’t believe he means it! “How convenient is it to speak?” is much more polite.) Salesperson: “We want to locate a few houses in your area so that we can redesign their kitchens and use them as show kitchens. Would you be interested?” Me: “Maybe.” (I am currently looking to redesign the kitchen but, despite ...

How to qualify clients in a win win way 2007-09-29 07:44:26 Gavin, you recently wrote an article Selling Pies Should Be Easy and you talked about not throwing up obstacles that make it difficult for our clients to buy from us. I totally agree with this however in our business there are various criteria that we need to meet that, from the customers point of view, are often seen as obstacles. To be honest, the customer feels it just isn’t their problem. As you say, as a salesman I need to "smooth" this process and act as a go between "fluffing up" the communication and keeping the deal on track. I just wondered if you had any tips? Sales professional,  Building engineering services industry What a great question! First off, it is important that as a salesperson or company we know what our boundaries are. As I have said many times before, there is little point working with prospects and clients that are going to prove unprofitable or unacceptable to our business. As a business per ...

How to build confidence and close more sales 2007-09-26 15:22:20 Confidence! You either have it or you don’t. There’s confident people and there’s not. It’s the way that we are made. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s what perceived wisdom would have us believe about confidence but perceived wisdom about confidence, as about many things, is seriously wrong. Perceived wisdom can also seriously damage your sales results, your sales career, your business and potentially your life. Know this, confidence is a mental programme. It’s something that we do not something that we are. It’s a way of thinking. That means that it’s something that everyone can learn. The question is then – how important is it to you to learn it? If you want to be a great sales professional or a successful business owner it should be very important to you. Confidence changes your sales behavioues and the way you approach challenges. It changes your actions and your results. It changes your image, your appearance t ...

Cold calling tips for getting through to the decision maker 2007-09-21 18:02:39 Have you ever made a call where you failed to get through to the decision maker whether cold call or warm call? Have you ever had a gatekeeper be rude to you? Or maybe you have even had a gatekeeper put the phone down on you? Perhaps the answer is yes to all three! I don’t think there is anyone involved with sales who hasn’t experienced at least one of the above scenarios! When I run sales seminars the vast majority of delegates tell me that they find getting past gatekeepers a major frustration and something that they wish they could improve upon. They say that they find their cold calling sessions constantly derailed by their inability to reach decision makers. Well, these tips are for you. They can be used when cold calling, warm calling or even calling your existing clients! However you utilise them, they will help you to effortlessly improve your call to client contact ratios. 1. Be assumptive When dealing with gatekeepers we must be polite but assumptive. One of ...

What sales superstars believe that you don’t 2007-09-12 18:15:22 Why do sales superstars outperform sales wannabees and sales hopefuls? What is it that they’ve got that you haven’t? One of the most compelling answers to this question is that sales superstars have more empowering beliefs systems. These belief systems in turn support their efforts and drive them to uncommon success. Sales superstars may have chosen these winning beliefs consciously or they may just be lucky enough to have them. No matter. Either way, it’s time that you start to focus on what you need to believe because what you believe will ultimately determine how you feel in any given situation and therefore how you behave. This in turn will be a powerful predictor of the sales results that you are going to get. Let’s say that in scenario one you have just made a sales presentation to a potential client. You believe that your product is “too expensive” and that your client is not going to pay what you need them t ...

Finding new client information 2007-09-06 18:48:30 Salespeople are always moaning to me about not having enough people to ring or about not having enough leads to prospect. It doesn’t seem to matter who they are or what level they are working at, comments like, “I’ve run out of people to ring” and “The database they (the management) gave me is useless” are commonplace. Here’s the thing. There are plenty of clients out there but you have to take some action to find them. Sales people moaning and whining about this subject always reminds me of a child saying that they’re bored in the middle of the summer holidays. Nonsense.  There’s always something to do, they’re just too busy focusing on their own perceived boredom and not on what they can do. These salespeople are just the same. They are spending far too much time moaning and far too little looking for new clients! It sounds unbelievable as I write this but I once gave one of my sales consultants Wale ...

How to destroy sales loser beliefs & catapult yourself to sales success 2007-08-18 11:36:35 In my life I have the joy and pleasure of helping others to achieve their goals and ambitions. I regularly get calls from people who have attended one of my seminars or who have bought one of my products telling me that they have doubled or trebled their sales. Whilst this is personally gratifying I have long wondered what it is that actually changes for these individuals that propels them to get these phenomenal results… As many of my seminars are purely mindset / motivation based it’s often not the skills (important as they are) , it’s usuall some element of mindset, but what? What is that empowers some individuals to walk out and double their sales virtually over night? My opinion is that people who get instantaneous results are the ones who manage to locate and destroy sales loser beliefs that are holding them back from what they want to achieve. This 10-step exercise will help you to find and remove any limiting beliefs that are stopping you from achie ... Amp

Finding your personal motivation 2007-08-15 04:37:06 Personal motivation is fundamental to your personal success both in sales and in life in general. Given its obvious importance you’d think that people would be experts at motivating themselves wouldn’t you? Unfortunately this is often not the case. I believe that the reason for this is the general belief that people are either motivated or they’re not. Most directors and business owners that I work with believe (before we’ve worked together) that you can’t teach motivation. Well, if there’s nothing you can do about it, why bother right? Wrong! Some people may be naturally more motivated than others. Some people have learned to be more motivated than others. Some people have been brought up in environments where self-motivation is encouraged and fostered. Some people will be able to self-motivate far easier than others… But remember, although changing your current habits might be difficult it is possible. Think what it would mean to you if you ...

Getting in a right state versus getting in the right state 2007-08-13 09:58:52 When I ask salespeople and business people, "What are the key attributes of a top sales person?" they come up with words like the following… Motivated, professional, positive, friendly, resilient, tenacious, communicative, outgoing, smart, reliable, trustworthy, independent, go-getting, smart, respectable, ambitious… What do you think these words have in common? I’m sure you will agree that they are all attitudes. I have worked with literally thousands of sales and business people and they all believe that attitudes are more prevalent than skills in sales and business. “If you don’t have the right attitude then you’ve no chance!” Infact, even when taking the skills into account, most business people, salespeople and entrepreneurs believe that the answer is about 80% attitudes versus 20% skills. Now I’m not saying that skills aren’t important because they clearly are crucially important. You probably know a salesperson wi ...

Selling pies should be easy 2007-07-26 18:25:39 Make it easy for your customers to buy from you… So finally British summer has arrived, the heavens have opened and it has chucked it down. After moaning for the last few years that it’s too hot in the summer and that the heat is down to global warming we’re now being told that it’s raining so it must be global warming… But amazingly, inbetween the rain, it’s actually really quite ok weather up here - for Yorkshire anyway! So today I managed to get the roof down on the car for a bit and decided to forget about having done 18 sales training seminars on Sales Negotiation Skills and Powerful Presenting all around the country and to have a little rest… Or so I thought… But as I often say in my sales seminars, life has a funny habit of teaching us what we need to know but most of us ignore it every day. Sales training tips are all around but how many do you notice… I woke this morning feeling fabulous and headed for my favourite out ...

What one quality makes a great salesperson? 2007-06-24 06:37:04 When running sales training seminars I often ask what attributes make a great salesperson. I get a multitude of answers but people often say things like… … motivated, charismatic, tenacious, honest, goal seeking, driven, positive mental attitude, self-belief, knowledge… Today, I don´t want a list however… I´m just real curious… If you could only choose one quality and one alone, what ONE quality do you think makes a great salesperson? Related EntriesDoes cold calling work? Getting in a right state versus getting in the right state How to build confidence and close more sales How to destroy sales loser beliefs & catapult yourself to sales success What sales superstars believe that you don't ...

Getting to the sales negotiation mindset 2007-06-17 08:35:43 Our sales training blog has just been referenced by this rather nice blog site on how to break into and excel in medical device sales, Non Sterile. Although there are many skills that are required for successful sales negotiation I think their point about being in the "right frame of mind" is critical. One of the communication skills employed by all successful salespeople at whatever point in the sale is the almost psychic ability to know what the other party is thinking. This skill, of course, is not psychic nor is it magic it is purely a matter of asking the right questions of yourself and focusing your mind. Try asking yourself the following questions before going into a sales negotiation situation… What do I know about the buyer’s background? What is the buyer hoping for from this negotiation? What do I think their likely starting points and walk-aways will be? What games are they likely to play and what tactics are they most likely to use? What is the ...

The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, The Final 2007-06-13 19:02:03 After last week’s flashback to what interviewing might have been like in “Life on Mars” with it’s sexist questioning tactics aimed at proving woman with children have to make their case to work, tonight’s episode was back to business as normal with a task.. This was billed as the “head to head” between Simon and Kristina but turned out to be more of a battle of egos between many of the “bit “ players. This was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern centre stage and it wasn’t pretty. Not so many sales training tips tonight but many personal development and career lessons for how not to achieve success in life, business and sales. The specialist task tonight was to come up with a landmark for London. SAS wanted a conceptual idea for the replacement of a £120m building he had just bought. It has to be meaningful, innovative and … make him some money. They were not actually going to “do” this project – it&rsqu ...