Independent Retailers Urged To Fight Back With Soft Touch

To mark the start of National Independents’ Week, leading sales expert Richard White is urging Independent retailers to focus on softer selling techniques and improving their customer service to win back vital market share in the face of continued price cuts from major high street retailers.

Independent retailers urged to stand out with soft selling techniques

Following recent reports from the CBI that retail sales in May were down after a temporary Easter rise, Richard White, founder of online sales resource The Accidental Salesman, claims that retailers are failing to make the most of potential customers that are still entering their stores and that often, it is an underlying mindset problem that  affects the quality of the team and their ability to sell well.

“In my experience, retailers tend to be order takers and expect the customer to know why they want to buy something, but people often need help to think things through and that takes a more consultative approach. People think that selling is all about the gift of the gab and waxing lyrical about a product and in some situations that is indeed the best approach, but in most retail situations, a more consultative approach would result in more frequent sales, as well as opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell. Independent retailers tend to be naturally better at this due to their size and their ability to dedicate more time to each customer,” advises Mr. White, who is also a Master NLP Practitioner.

Mr. White is an advocate of soft selling techniques and believes that many sales people are simply trying too hard to sell the benefits of a product, when really they should be thinking about what the customer actually wants and why they chose to come into the shop in the first place.

“People are walking into shops and walking out again and buying nothing, presumably to spend their money down the road. Independent retailers need to see that people are still willing to buy, they are just more choosey about where they spend it, and so they need to be a bit smarter at how they manage the customer experience when they are in the shop rather than doing the same old thing that worked in the boom time when customers were in spending mode,” he says.

Mr White also claims that many managers assume that the solution to poor sales performance is more training, when in most cases, it is a change in mindset that is needed before training will have any effect.

“Store staff do not see themselves as sales people and have all sorts of mental hang-ups with selling, just like the owners of small businesses and professionals I work with. There is no doubt that people are feeling the pinch at the moment, but if a potential customer walks into a shop, an Independent retailer does have an awful lot of influence on whether they spend with them, or go and spend it in a competitors shop down the road,” he adds.

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Editors Notes

Richard White provides inspirational business development coaching and mentoring for business owners, reluctant sales people, and non-sales staff. He is an expert in selling business services and in helping non-sales people to quickly develop the right mindset for sales and sales management success. Richard’s job is to change the way people think about sales and sales people rather than train techniques.

Richard is an NLP Master Practitioner and Certified NLP Coach. He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and is a member of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management.

Richard is also founder of The Accidental Salesman an online resource which provides non-sales people with hundreds of free articles, hints and tips to becoming more successful at sales. He has also recently launched The Accidental Salesman Training Centre based in Haslemere which provides a sanctuary for businesses that would like to develop and improve their sales.

He also regularly runs his popular Lead Generation Masterclass at venues across London.

For more information visit www.theaccidentalsalesman.com

Press Enquiries

For press enquiries relating to Richard White, please contact Jessica Suter on 01603 283 503 or email Jessica@mediajems.co.uk.

Computer-based coaching primed to boost sales success

Computer-based coaching primed to boost sales success Research has just got underway into a new computer-based sales coaching system designed to help sales people improve their performance and success rates virtually.

After being used successfully on thousands of people in other similar fields to help with conditions such as anxiety and depression, the research team at Cognitive Sales is planning to launch a ’sales special’ of this successful computer based coaching programme and are looking to the small and corporate business world for their views.

 

In other fields, computer based coaching is now the officially recommended treatment and approach in the UK, for which it works just as well as face to face coaching and Bryan McCrae, Sales Psychologist and managing director of Cognitive Sales has high confidence for the technique in the sales arena too.

“In Computer Based Coaching, the coaching is being performed by a specially designed computer program, using proven coaching techniques, rather than by a person. After a brief introduction to the concepts behind the system, it builds a behavioural profile of the user from responses given to a set of questions. Based on these responses it then uses a guided self help approach to create a personalised action plan for the user to follow, monitoring and evaluating progress. Each user will have a different experience based on their own circumstances, responses, challenges and progress. The system is designed to be used over a six week period with a consolidation and reinforcement stage afterwards. You could think of it as ‘brain training’ for sales people,” explains McCrae.

According to McCrae, the most successful sales people hold a number of key attitudes and behavioural styles which can be successfully taught or enhanced via a computer to improve bottom-line productivity and staff satisfaction.

“To encourage change, work-based ‘behaviour experiments’ and tasks are used, to provide opportunities to go beyond established and engrained thinking patterns and subsequently improve performance. The system stores the user profile and input from all the sessions, responding to the user’s entries and prompting/reminding about behavioural tasks and actions with emails and text messages. Whilst it is markedly different from human interaction, it does enable people to take advantage of a coaching programme at their own pace, in the comfort of their own home and for a fraction of the price of traditional coaching,” says McCrae.

To participate in the online survey, visit http://tinyurl.com/COGNITIVE9

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Editor’s Notes

Bryan McCrae is a Sales Psychologist and Managing Director of Cognitive Sales, which specialises in helping ambitious SMEs grow their sales fast.

With a background in psychology and a personal success in sales and sales management, Bryan founded sales and marketing company Cognitive Sales in 2004. Bryan is able to help businesses improve and maximise their business to business sales and marketing effectiveness by providing very practical operational and strategic advice, coaching, mentoring and interim services.

Bryan is a passionate entrepreneur who seeks out innovation with high market potential and makes it happen. He sits on the advisor panel for Portsmouth University Enterprise Centre and has been a guest speaker at various business seminars and higher education Business Studies courses.

Information supplied by Media Jems. For further information or images, please contact Rebecca King on 01603 283 506 or email Rebecca@mediajems.co.uk

Poor weather is snow excuse for low sales productivity

Businesses across the country may have missed out on lucrative sales deals as their sales executives took unnecessary ‘duvet days’ during the recent bad weather, says leading sales expert Andy Preston.

With reports claiming that one in five adults stayed away from work and that some employers were instructing their staff not to even attempt to travel in, Preston, MD and Head Trainer at sales performance training company Outstanding Results, believes that many businesses missed out on crucial opportunities to make headway with calls at precisely the time when others were not.

“The snow has the same effect on people as ‘Friday afternoon’ syndrome, when people assume there is no point in making any calls as no-one will be there or they won’t want to take the call. I’ve closed many major sales leads on a Friday afternoon and I’m pretty sure there were deals to be made this week too for those who were bold enough to make the calls in the first place”, says Preston.

‘I’ve lost count of the number of sales reps who’ve complained to me that they have trouble getting through to the right person, or getting blocked by a gatekeeper or voicemail’ says Preston. ‘Yet on the days when they had most chance of getting through, some sales reps took that as a chance to have a ‘playstation day’. One rep even decided to spend all day in the pub!”

Preston claims that it’s often their attitude when adversity strikes that separates the top salespeople from the rest. The top salespeople will find a way to make something happen, while the rest complain that someone or something else is to blame for their poor performance – most of which comes from low activity! And for those people, the excuse to take a ‘snow day’ came all too easily.

“Those same salespeople will be back at their desks this week, complaining how bad things are, while the top salespeople took the snow as a great opportunity to build connection and rapport with new clients, and this week they’ll be reaping the benefit of that activity with new appointments in their diary”, says Preston.

Recession could be golden ticket to success for businesses who can adapt

Businesses who are struggling to stay afloat could be missing a trick by failing to reinvent themselves and provide products and services that the market needs right now, advises Accidental Salesman Richard White, who claims that retail chain Woolworths failed because they could not change with the times and were ‘too emersed in the past’.

White, a leading business development expert and founder of free online sales resource The Accidental Salesman (www.accidentalsalesman.com), suggests that like Woolworths, many companies who have done reasonably well in the past are now likely to be suffering and finding that with less money around, selling the ’same old, same old’ simply isnt profitable anymore.

“Woolworths is a great example of a company that just teetered on year after year without a clear market concept. I was surprised that they last so long. Now if it were me, I would have turned them into a chain of Pix N Mix stores long ago, but others have beaten them to it. Pick N Mix is everywhere now, you even get them in service stations, the niche opportunity there has now gone”, says White.

“Businesses that may have been doing very well due to a boom economy are now realising that without change, finding enough sales is getting harder and harder. I’m concerned at how many businesses do not seem to have woken up to the fact that the economic weather has changed and that it actually does not matter if we are in recession or not. The worry of the unknown is enough for people to stop spending”, says White.

White says the best advice any business can take is not to assume failure, but to take some time to retreat, look at the market and find a new niche.  He even suggests that some businesses could actually do incredibly well if they adapt and capitalise on the opportunities presented by a recession market.

“You don’t make money by selling people what they no longer need and I often remind business owners that some of the biggest fortunes were made in the bad times”, says White. “For example, Travelodge are now repositioning themselves as the market leader in budget travel accommodation because they recognise that they can capitalise on a downturn in travel and fill their empty rooms. Their strategy will help them increase market share while the chips are down so that when the market picks up, they’ll have a strong following for when they raise their prices. If you have a more strategic top down approach to sales and marketing that focuses on maximising the value the business adds to the market place, you’ll survive the recession and come out stronger”, says White.

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For press enquiries please contact Rebecca King on 01603 283 506 or email rebecca@mediajems.co.uk

Surviving firms left with no option but to look for new business

Even businesses with great service and satisfied customers must now look to generate new business if they are to survive a punishing recession as it continues to put good firms out of business, according to the UK’s leading sales expert Andy Preston.

Whilst the phrase ‘it is always better to service existing customers than look for new ones’ still rings true, Preston warns that the marketplace has changed and many businesses will be finding themselves losing customers through no fault of their own, due to mergers, acquisitions and other businesses going bust.

“As the market gets tougher, those ‘safe’ existing clients simply aren’t as safe anymore. For those customers that stay around, the people who you’ve struck up good relationships with may be losing their jobs, or the company is cutting costs, therefore your profit margins are going to be squeezed at the very least.  Your customers are also very likely to be looking at other options, either doing away with your product or service entirely, or looking at your competitors far more than ever before in a bid to get the cheapest prices they can”, explains Preston.

Preston, who is also director and Head Trainer of sales performance training company Outstanding Results, believes that the savvy companies right now will be looking at implementing ‘new business’ drives to replace existing clients or customers they have lost and are focusing on bringing in profitable new business.

“The ability to bring in new business in the current market could mean the difference between a very profitable year for you and your company, and a very difficult one….or even one where you struggle to stay afloat”, says Preston.

For more information visit www.andy-preston.com.

For press enquiries please contact Rebecca King on Rebecca@mediajems.co.uk or 01603 283506

Grads with ‘back to basics’ image stand better chance of getting hired

Graduates who adopt a more traditional image for interviews and avoid cutting edge ‘quirky’ styles are more likely to secure a graduate position in the current economic climate, according to graduate recruitment training expert Andy Preston.

With companies up and down the country announcing ‘freezes’ on hiring, or actively reducing headcount, Preston, Director and Head Trainer at sales performance training company Outstanding Results, believes that graduates in particular will be disadvantaged due to their lack of practical experience and that image and conduct will be what impresses employers and graduate recruiters at the early interview stage.

“In the past, graduates came into an ‘easy’ market where a plethora of graduate recruitment schemes and positions have been available to them and graduate recruiters had a large number of opportunities for candidates.  But now the market is different.  Companies are cutting back on graduate recruitment schemes (and some are abolishing them entirely) and graduates need to realise that opportunities will become increasingly harder to come by”.

Preston believes that a back to basics approach with smart dress and tidy appearance could be the critical factor in a new graduate securing a job, particularly when up against more practically experienced candidates.

“Dressing more professionally than usual will have a positive impact on the interviewer and by this I mean more conventional dress and hairstyles, clean crisp white shirt and plain tie.  Why would you wear anything slightly ‘edgy’ to the interview and run the risk of being discounted from the role?”

Preston also advises graduates to adopt a positive attitude and actually sounding interested when the interviewer is describing the role, as listening to what they say and asking questions about an aspect of what they are talking about can reap huge rewards.

“Prepare a list of good questions when you go in – and make sure the first questions you ask are NOT about how much you get paid and how many holidays you’re going to get!  Nothing will turn an interviewer off faster”, adds Preston.

For more information visit www.andy-preston.com.

For press enquiries please contact Rebecca King at Rebecca@mediajems.co.uk or 01603 283506

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Sales inspiration at dawn brings in 20K just in time for Christmas

A businessman from Farnham will be having a very merry Christmas this year after sealing a last minute business deal worth over 20K, following inspiration from an early morning sales training breakfast event in London.

After attending the highly acclaimed Sales Training Breakfast Club on 3^rd December, Colin Marks*, a recruitment specialist, was at Waterloo station intending to catch his train home. Emboldened by training breakfast, delivered by international speaker and leading sales trainer Andy Preston, Marks decided on the spur of the moment to ring up one of his clients and get a meeting then and there and subsequently secured over £21k of retained business.

“I don’t consider myself a salesperson, but as the owner of a small business, I don’t have much choice but to sell to my customers. Andy is well known for training sales professionals but he can also provide the same inspiration and motivation to those of us who have to do it ourselves because the very survival of our business depends on it”, says Marks, 41.

First launched in Manchester in March 2008, the club is designed to help small business owners and sales people who often do not have access to good sales training, as it is usually very costly.  In the face of difficult trading conditions, Preston believes the Sales Training Breakfast Club gives people the ideal opportunity to learn how to make their business thrive, even during a recession.

“It was attending Andy’s breakfast club that spurred me on to making the call to the client. Small businesses really need to push forward during the credit crunch and take advantage of any opportunity to gain new skills and this was definitely worth getting up at 5am for”, adds Marks.

Preston, who is director of sales performance training company Outstanding Results, says “I started the Sales Training Breakfast Club to give small business owners like Colin a unique opportunity to get involved with something that suits their budget, their diary and provides instant return-on-investment”.

The next Sales Training Breakfast will be held in Manchester on Wednesday 10^th December 2008. The next London event will be held on Wednesday 11^th February 2009. For more information visit www.salestrainingbreakfastclub.com or call 0845 130 6779.

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* Due to client confidentiality agreements, Colin Marks’ name has been changed.

Struggling businesses given helping hand with free lead generation seminar

A free tele-seminar is taking place next week in an effort to help many struggling small business owners to improve their lead generation skills in preparation for the difficult trading year ahead.

Hosted by The Accidental Salesman® Richard White, the free tele-seminar will cover the six fundamental questions business owners need to be able to answer in order to make their lead generation much easier, something which often hard to master but critical to success, especially in the current economic climate.

White, believes that many small business owners are finding it extremely difficult to keep going through the continuing credit crunch and need to focus their efforts on driving their business forward, starting with building a pipeline of well qualified leads.

“Running your own business makes you realise the kind of skills you need to develop, with selling being one the most difficult areas to master. In my experience, those who can learn how to package and sell themselves just like they were a product are likely to be the most successful”, explains White, who is giving away three free places at his next London Lead Generation Masterclass on 1^st December to members of The Accidental Salesman club ®.

Richard White’s free Lead Generation tele-seminar will take place on Monday 24^th November 2008 at 6.30pm. Follow this link for more information

Members of The Accidental Salesman® who would like to enter the prize draw to receive a free place at the Lead Generation Masterclass should email their details to

Richard@theaccidentalsalesman.com before 5pm on Tuesday 25^th November 2008. Even if you do not win, all entrants will receive £50 off. For more information visit www.theaccidentalsalesman.com

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Manchester Sales Training Expert speaks at Ultimate Business Seminar

One of the UK’s leading sales experts is set to help over a thousand attendees to improve their sales skills at this weekend’s Ultimate Business Seminar in London.

Stockport-based Andy Preston of Outstanding Results will be helping attendees to get more comfortable, confident and motivated to sell their products or services to the world through his seminar “If you can’t sell, there’s no point being in business”, which takes place on the show’s opening day on Friday 21^st November.

Preston, an internationally renowned sales trainer, founder of Outstanding Results and the UK’s first Sales Training Breakfast Club, will be addressing issues such as why people fail in sales and how to overcome the fear of cold calling and believes that now is the time for businesses to take action and get ready to take 2009 by storm with a new, positive approach to driving their business forward, despite the continuing credit crunch.

“Many people have succumbed to the mindset that as we are in a recession, people won’t be buying, and so there’s no point in me trying to sell to them as they’ll just say no. This really couldn’t be further from the truth and people are still buying and will continue to do so! If anything, they are simply a little more choosy with who they do business with, which is why your selling skills have never been more crucial in getting ahead during the crunch”, explains Preston, a former Sales Director with over a decade of experience in the sales industry.

Preston will be speaking alongside top experts including top Tony Robbins’ trainer Keith Cunningham, and New York Times Bestselling Author Loral Langemeier at the three day event, organised by NLP specialists Christopher Howard Events.

The Ultimate Business Seminar, will take place from 21-23^rd November 2008 at The Ibis Hotel, Earls Court, London. For more information visit www.ultimatebusinesseminar.eu.

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For press enquiries please contact Rebecca King at Rebecca@mediajems.co.uk or on 01603 283506

Accidental Salesman teaches top students tricks of the sales trade

Nine sixth form Young Enterprise students from two of the region’s top secondary schools received a host of valuable sales tips from the UK’s leading ‘Accidental Salesman’ Richard White on Thursday 7th November as part of their Young Enterprise scheme. Richard was so impressed with group’s enterprise that by the end of the evening he’d even bought shares in it!

The students, from Dr Challonor’s High School for Girls and Beaconsfied High School, devised an enterprise called ‘Noire Crafts’ (www.noirecrafts.co.uk), which organises themed children’s parties including pirate and fairy themes. Now that their business was in place, the group’s mentor Neil Fairbrother, founder of the UK’s award winning webTV company, pod3.tv, decided to invite Richard White to the Amersham High School Business Centre to deliver some much needed sales coaching to help them really get the business off the ground.

Richard, who regularly teaches people how to refine their sales techniques through his highly acclaimed Lead Generation Masterclass, spent time with the group discussing their sales strategy and teaching them how to close the deal.

“Having been a business advisor in the past for my local school in Haslemere, I was delighted to come to help the Noire Crafts team to improve their sales techniques, although maybe they learnt a little too much as they ended up convincing me to buy shares in their business by the end of the evening!” explains Richard, who launched his free online sales resource TheAccidentalSalesman.com last month.

Young Enterprise is the UK’s leading business and enterprise education charity, which brings volunteers from business into the classroom to work with teachers and students. There are more than 5,500 schools and colleges participating in their programmes, which reach over 350,000 young people a year from primary school right through to university, who rely on the volunteer support of business professionals like Neil and Richard to help develop their understanding of the world of business.

“Young Enterprise is a fantastic scheme which is helping young people to gain much needed practical skills which will prepare them well for the world of work and I strongly encourage more businesses to get involved in helping to support these inspiring young businesspeople”, adds Richard.

Richard will be holding his next Lead Generation Masterclass in Central London on 1st December 2008. For further information on attending this popular event or for free sales advice, tips and resources, visit www.theaccidentalsalesman.com or email richard@theaccidentalsalesman.com

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Notes to Editor
Richard White provides inspirational business development coaching and mentoring for business owners, reluctant sales people, and non-sales staff. He is an expert in selling business services and in helping non-sales people to quickly develop the right mindset for sales and sales management success. Richard’s job is to change the way people think about sales and sales people rather than train techniques.

Richard is an NLP Master Practitioner and Certified NLP Coach. He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and is a member of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management. He recently launched his free online business resource The Accidental Salesman which provides non-sales people with hundreds of articles, hints and tips to becoming more successful at sales. He also regularly runs his popular Lead Generation Masterclass at venues across London.

For more information visit www.theaccidentalsalesman.com

About pod3.tv
pod3.tv was launched June 1 2006 and was ranked as one of the top 10 most innovative companies in the UK in November 2007’s Courvoisier Future 500 report, published in the Sunday Observer national newspaper.

pod3.tv produces and distributes TV-style shows across a range of genres and distributes them as commercially sponsored video podcasts for viewing on Macs, PC, video iPods and iPhones.

For advertising in pod3.tv shows: sales@pod3.tv <mailto:sales@thamesvalleypod.tv>
Or call the pod3.tv team on 01494 794001

About Young Enterprise
With more than 40 years’ experience, Young Enterprise is the UK’s leading business and enterprise education charity.

It offers a range of programmes, based on the principle of Learning by Doing, which brings volunteers from business into the classroom to work with teachers and students. Some of our programmes enable students to work together to run their own real company. Others use games, hands on activities and role play to develop skills and capabilities for business and enterprise.

The businesses and volunteers that support Young Enterprise take an active role in building a better-motivated, educated and enterprising workforce, at the same time making a real difference to the existing lives and future potential of young people who live and attend school in their area.
For more information visit www.young-enterprise.org.uk

For general press enquiries please contact Jenna Gould or Rebecca King on 01603 283 506 or email rebecca@mediajems.co.uk