26 | TRAINING WORDS | Paul Owen
alespeople are born not bred, they say (whoever ‘they’ are, they seem to say it often). You’ve either got the gift of the gab or you haven’t. Once you’ve got that, you just need to be thrown into the deep end and you’ll work out how to do it. Sink or swim. That’s the way to develop a great team. If they sell, keep ‘em, if they don’t, get ‘em out! It’s always been that way. And always will be.
Practise perfection S
In the fi rst of his monthly training columns for OPP, Paul Owen wonders why sales ability is taken for granted in the international property arena, and debunks the myths surrounding success in this area.
natural ability is required but that, to be the very best you can be, you need to practise in order to make the most of your natural ability. Training – in the right format – allows that practise. And makes it more likely that you (and your teams) will be as good as they can
In the international property world, there is little value placed on sales training. The sentiments above are largely accepted as true and there are plenty of people that seem to prove it. I ask you to step outside the world of international property for a moment, away from the wider world of sales itself, and consider this question: can you name any fi eld of human endeavour in which the very best rely only on their natural ability and succeed purely on that ability?
Sport? No. Music? No. Business?
No. Art? No. You can keep going if you like. You’ll keep getting the same answer. The point is not that no
“Training is about changes in behaviour rather than new ideas, though it can involve both”
possibly be. Consistently so. Salespeople with the ability to sell
well will be at their best consistently if they also train themselves in their art. Little and often is best. My series of articles in the coming months will introduce a range of ways in which to do this. I’ll also help you identify the types of people that are most likely to become successful in sales and show you how to maximise sales success across all your teams, not just the sales teams. For now, let’s look at debunking
three of the more prominent myths about success in sales. “Knowledge is power.” This is at best only half true. If you know something but don’t use it, there’s no power in that. The use of earned knowledge is power. Without use, it’s, well, useless. “Training is only worthwhile if I learn some new ideas”. Training – sales or any other type for that matter – is about changes in behaviour rather than new ideas, though it can often involve both. If you leave a training session and do not change your behaviour in any way, that session was a waste of your time and money. “You can’t train sales because every conversation is different”. When I prepare sales teams for my training and hear this excuse, I ask them to record 20 or 30 of their sales calls, listen to them and come back to tell me if they still believe that every call is completely different. What they fi nd is that most calls follow a certain pattern and similar information is shared again and again. Once you accept that to be true, you can
Paul Owen was fi rst chief execu- tive of the Association of Interna- tional Property Professionals (AIPP), building the membership to 400+, creating its annual consumer guide and setting up the AIPP Awards. He now runs The Clear Path Company, specialists in sales recruitment & sales training, which this year launched ‘Let’s get Britain selling!’, a nationwide programme of free sales training for 16-24 yr olds in the UK.
prepare for much of that in advance. Not a script (never!) but a range of sales communication tools that you’re likely to use.
Even if you don’t accept this premise and maintain that every call is completely different, turn your thoughts to the world of sport for a moment. Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafa Nadal – the world’s top three tennis players – cannot possibly know what shot their opponent will play and when. Every rally, every point, every match is different. Of course it is. Does this mean they tell their coach it’s not worth practising today because you never know what’s going to happen in a match? The very idea is ludicrous. So why do we accept this idea when thinking about sales?
If you’re still reading, you probably agree with the debunking of these myths (or you’re at least questioning them again) or you’re getting fuel to write a letter of protest about my thoughts. I look forward to introducing my ideas about improving sales performance, and maintaining that improvement, based around my company’s four step structure to successful selling: The EASY Sales Structure. In addition, please feel free to send me any questions about challenges you face in selling today. Where possible, I’ll be delighted to include them in my articles.
Bring out your best | Training can help boost your sales team’s natural selling ability ... as well as increase your profi ts
Our ability to move prospective clients to action is the single biggest factor behind our success. Let’s not leave that to chance. Certain natural attributes combined with regular training will always beat natural talent alone.
BUSINESS
www.opp.org.uk | JUNE 2012
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