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: 0 0 0 2004

Articles from Gavin Ingham sales training & personal development

How To Upsell And Cross-Sell To Achieve Rapid Sales Growth 2008-01-25 09:46:13 January has been a busy month of sales seminars, sales training and motivational speeches so I hadn’t had any time to think what I was going to write about this week until about half an hour ago… I was sat at my PC in my home office, tidying up some emails when one of my good friends called. It’s been a while since I have spoken to him so I was delighted to hear from him. After a quick catch up we quickly focused our attentions onto setting the world to rights! He said that he has something he thought I would be interested in hearing… This story starts with my friend’s 18 year old son who is currently enjoying a gap year, getting his head down and working. He has a job in major UK supermarket and he is really enjoying it. Based in South West London the store he is working in is busy, affluent and diverse. It’s not huge but it’s a decent size. They have around about 150 staff and shifts would mean that at any one time there might be 40 or more ...

How To Upsell And Cross-Sell To Achieve Rapid Sales Growth 2008-01-25 09:46:13 January has been a busy month of sales seminars, sales training and motivational speeches so I hadn’t had any time to think what I was going to write about this week until about half an hour ago… I was sat at my PC in my home office, tidying up some emails when one of my good friends called. It’s been a while since I have spoken to him so I was delighted to hear from him. After a quick catch up we quickly focused our attentions onto setting the world to rights! He said that he has something he thought I would be interested in hearing… This story starts with my friend’s 18 year old son who is currently enjoying a gap year, getting his head down and working. He has a job in major UK supermarket and he is really enjoying it. Based in South West London the store he is working in is busy, affluent and diverse. It’s not huge but it’s a decent size. They have around about 150 staff and shifts would mean that at any one time there might be 40 or more ...

Selling In A Recession - Why Some People Are Going To Crash And Others Are Going To Fly 2008-01-13 10:52:58 Over the last few months there has been a lot of talk of recession. Wherever you look and whatever you read, ever since the American subprime crisis, talk of a recession seems to be bombarding us from every possible media. Every expert there is seems to have something to say about whether there will or whether there won’t be a serious recession and if there is, how long will it last and just how severe will it be? If there is a serious recession, learning how to keep on selling in a recession will be vital. Sales training could well be the key. I have clients from one man bands to multi-national corporates and from entrepreneurs to professionals and I see and hear a lot of people starting to worry a little. People are batoning down the hatches and getting ready for trouble. I have worked with many clients who have weathered recessions, grown their businesses through recessions and even set up and started successful businesses in recessions. Now is not the time to be panicking. No ...

How Not To Win Customers, 3 Sales Strategies That Really Don’t Work! 2007-12-26 07:21:07 It’s Christmas and I have probably eaten to much Christmas pudding so perhaps I am feeling unforgiving but, as I wade through crackers, games and pies, I have been mulling over some of the ways that businesess manage to prevent their own sales and lose customers without seemingly trying! So that got me thinking that it would be a bit of fun to have a look at how no to do it, how not to sell if you like, “How Not To Win Customers, 3 Sales Strategies That Really Don’t Work.” Sales Loser Strategy 1: Be Unreachable On Friday 21st December in the afternoon I had done some research online and was trying to order something over the telephone. The first 3 companies that I rang did not even answer the phone! The 4th said that they could not deal with my enquiry until after Christmas and the 5th said that there was no-one available to deal with my enquiry. The 6th company were delighted to get my call, answered my queries and made the sale. What’s more, th ...

How to sell more in competitive markets 2007-12-17 12:22:06 I received your newsletter. Thanks again. I wanted to ask you a question. I work for a (market given) magazine that is distributed for free to (consumers) throughout the local area. I sell advertising space in the magazine. Our magazine has been around the longest. It started in (our area) and has branched out to include (surrounding areas). However, there are 2 other magazines that are distributed in the same area. One of the magazines has been in our county since 2000. The other magazine has been around in maybe the same time frame. I have two questions:- 1. How do I convince the advertisers that our magazine is a good place to advertise?  I receive a lot of objections that include things like:  "We already advertise in ABC magazine and it is distributed in the same way as yours.” 2. I go to all of the advertisers that advertise in the other magazines to try and get them to advertise in ours. I also go to companies that don’t advertise in the magazines and ...

Making more time to make more sales 2007-11-26 12:02:41 Gavin, I have a new client that needs constant hand holding and she seems to think that she is my only client.   Have you got any advice as to how to keep her happy but not put all my other clients on the back burner, which for the last week I feel I have been doing????    Thank you for your help!!!   Thanks for the email, this is a sales question which I get asked a lot when running sales seminars and when sales training. The aim here is clear, we need to help you to get some control back over your client and some balance back into your sales activities. Failing to do this can result in you spending a disordinate amount of time with one client and lost sales due to you missing out on other important sales activities such as prospecting!   Pareto’s Law explains that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your activities and this is as true when selling as in any other discipline. When I run sales training sessions we often discuss how much sales energy ...

What’s your Si (Sales Intensity) rating? 2007-11-14 10:01:42 The last couple of weeks seem to have been a blur of activity… I’ve been finalising the text for my next sales training book, "No Fear Cold Calling", writing the outlines for my new open seminar "Close the Sale, Get that Deal" (or "Shut That Door!" as it has become known around here) and continuing planning for my new sales project Talking Sales Success. And I know that many of you are just as focused… And many of you aren’t! In the last year I  have run open seminars for c. 10,000 delegates in the UK alone, delivered 100+ days of seminars / training, given motivational speeches for annual conferences, AGMs and away days and done sales coaching / training for a handful of select clients. And that’s before I started working on books, audios, DVDs or even blog articles! Meeting, working with and helping  all of those people has been a delight but it can also be a frustration, particularly when individuals are not wor ...

Perfect Presentations article at Training Zone 2007-11-06 18:45:58 By Dawn Smith. Whether giving presentations is the thing you dread most, or just another day at the office, it’s a skill that can always be improved. Dawn Smith gathers some tips and advice from public speaking gurus on how to overcome stage-fright, engage the audience and make your presentations shine. The New York Times famously reported in 1984 that speaking in public was most people’s biggest fear, ranking higher than death. For a trainer, presenting to delegates is likely to be daily bread. However, even those experienced at talking to groups can choke when faced with an unfamiliar scenario. “Most people are capable of presenting one-to-one, or even one-to-ten, but various things can conspire to make them nervous,” says Gavin Ingham, a speaker and author who also teaches “Powerful Presenting” courses. The fear-inducing factor may be how important the event is, how many people will be there, who else will be listening, whether it’s being re ...

Should I only be cold calling prospects I convert most easily? 2007-11-02 06:40:31 Hi Gavin,   I am wondering if you could help me with a problem I currently have. I work for a web development company. We supply our services to designers and web design agencies. In recent weeks I have been calling a list of graphic designers and a list of web designers. For the graphic designers I normally seem to get an appointment from 1 call in 10 (ish), however for the web developers/agencies it seems to be 1 in 25.   I have two questions, firstly, do you think it is worthwhile to contact web agencies where their objections are that they do the website prgramming themselves?   Secondly, if it is, in your opinion; how do you get around the fact that the majority tell you upfront they do it themselves and it is a core business? What would you say to get them to engage further?  My opinion is my time would be better spent calling design agencies where they may need our services, but i am interested as to what your opinion on the matter is Thanks for the question. ...

Audio interview of sales motivational speaker Gavin Ingham on ExpertsOnline.tv 2007-10-30 10:53:15 And now for something a little different… I thought it was about time we did a bit of podcasting so here is an mp3 for your enjoyment! Sales motivational speaker and sales training expert, Gavin Ingham (that’s me by the way), interviewed on ExpertsOnline.tv. In this interview we talk about  sales strategies, sales techniques and sales atitiudes and a lot more besides so grab a cup of tea, a biscuit and a pen and enjoy. Sales interview with Gavin Ingham Audio length: 22 minutes 30 seconds This is the first of several interviews and audios that I will be posting at GavinIngham.com so make sure that you join my newsletter now and you will be the first to hear about them. Related EntriesBest of Gavin Ingham In the media Audios, mp3 & podcasts The Sales Apprentice: Sales training tips from the hit TV show, Part XI Sales Success ...

Gavin Ingham interviewed by Keybank on successful goal setting 2007-10-30 05:12:17 I was interviewed by Keybank on goal setting for students but before you switch off and decide this is not relevant for you, it might well be! The answers are relevant for everyone no matter where you are in your career!! Everytime you see the word student or education below you will see that it can either be ignored or switched to make the answers relevant to you! 1)   Why is it important to set personal goals in order to succeed educationally? Setting goals is an essential part of achieving “success” not only educationally but also in your life in general. The skill of goal-setting is something which should be taught to everyone from a young age. Setting goals encourages individuals to look at what they want to achieve, to create route maps to that success and to prioritise correctly. Effective goal-setting requires the goal-setter to ask themselves “why is this important to me?” This is particularly important in education as many young peo ...

Stand up if you like cold calling! 2007-10-23 05:58:33 Gavin What are your thoughts on this? I am a firm believer of standing while selling but none of my colleagues are. Thank you for your training on cold calling, I thought it was excellent, however experienced one is with cold calling there is always room for improvement. Please let me know your thoughts on standing, MW, No Fear Cold Calling attendee Is standing up whilst on the phone a good thing? Does it improve sales results? Are you right or are your team right? What a great question! Standing up whilst on your phone is one of those perennial sales wisdoms that has been around for years. I remember one of my first sales managers taking away our chairs and not letting us sit down until we had had a “win” on the phone! This practise is certainly not dead in today’s competitive sales markets either. Some of my clients have "Power Hours" of cold calling during which no-one is allowed to sit down or put the phone down. I was watching a reality programme ...

Dealing with voicemail, 10 tips for outwitting the electronic sales prevention machine 2007-10-15 17:58:12 Do you ever get bored of listening to your clients’ voicemails? Do you grow tired of repeating the same old same old and never getting any call backs? Do you wish there was some magic way to get clients to ring you back? You’re in good company! Complaints about voicemail, the electronic gatekeeper, are one of the biggest issues that many of my seminar delegates face. If only they could avoid voicemails! If only they could speak to more decision makers! If only there was a magical technique for guaranteeing that their prospects would ring them back! Get over it! There isn’t. But voicemail is so  much worse than it was 10 or even 5 years ago Gavin. Soon I won’t be able to speak to anyone! Is it? Maybe. Maybe not. In my experience there were plenty of industries even 10 years ago where many clients used voicemail as a way of filtering their inbound calls. When I was a sales director and got 35 to 40 inbound calls a day I used voicemail to filter my calls. This ...

Tips for negotiating in the toughest of negotiation scenarios 2007-10-13 03:26:05 How to negotiate like a sales superstar when it seems you can only fail… As with all of my sales training tips and sales strategies it´s important that you know how to apply tactics in the real world. Here is a negotiation question that has been asked of me several times and in several different guises:- Gavin. I´ve got a client who is already using us. He is using one product list value 3000 and another worth 2000. Total value 5000. He has only been paying 1500! He now wants to drop the 3000 product and continue with the 2000 product but is expecting a discount from his current investment of 1500. What can I do? Great question and one which is not at all uncommon. The first problem here is that this client has obviously been seriously under sold in the past and this has set his expectations. Whilst there is not a lot you can do about this situation now it´s important that you learn this and do not fall into this trap yourself when signing up new clients yourse ...

Goal setting with no limitations 2007-10-10 10:11:06 I take holidays as a good opportunity to read, digest and think about life and work in general and this week I am in Spain thinking about goals and goal setting. It´s occurred to me that I don´t talk about goals and goal setting enough. I don´t really know why. Certainly, it´s one of the most powerful personal and career development exercises I have ever done. I remember the first time I ever came across goal setting, years and years ago.  It was through a book by Anthony Robbins called Unlimited Power. A friend of mine recommended it and said that reading it would increase my sales results. Yeah, righto! But I like reading and I like books so I picked it up anyway. Wow! Did I enjoy it or what! The book is a great read and a must read if you´ve never read anything like that before. Anyway, I duly followed the instructions and set myself goals for numerous areas of my life, many of them "plainly absurd" based on where I was at that point in m ...