Sales – The Holy Grail of Improving Your Company? An Intro….

On the back of Kirklees Business Conference, we’re just in the middle of putting together some bespoke seminars with Carl Hopkins and Nicky Pattinson. Both Carl and Nicky spoke to over 100 delegates each at KBC ’09 and both gained rave reviews from those in attendance. Seminars at any Conference are what they are – i.e. a speaker stands and talks on a specific topic to the delegates and as a delegate you take from it what is applicable to you and park the rest.

The principle of these new seminars (08/12/09 & 15/12/09, The Galpharm Stadium, Huddersfield) is to scale down the delegate numbers to just 30 or so and then ask them what they want covering within each seminar. The aim with these is to ensure that the topics covered are relevant to the delegates and their businesses at this particular time so all involved knows that there will be something in there specifically for them. From here, both Carl and Nicky are building their presentations bespoke to the audience and offering answers/opinions/advice on what’s been asked.

As all the delegates are small business owners, what will most likely happen (and what we are planning will happen) is that all the issues/blockages/queries raised by each individual will be pertinent to everyone in the room. It will literally be a case of, “Ah yes, that’s happening to me also”, or, “I’m struggling with that too!”

So, what’s this got to do with ‘The Holy Grail of Improving Your Company?’ I hear you ask (I would be asking this by now).

Two things:

1). Many of the blockages sent through from the delegates involved in these seminars were centred on Sales and how to either do it or be better at it. Responses (in a ‘How To Improve On’ format) included:

• Generating new business when it’s not your strong suit – fine face to face but not so hot over the phone!
• Selling confidence and techniques.
• Motivation, when not getting sales success.
• How to get through to the right people from a cold call – specifically MD’s/CEO’s.
• Tricks for motivation in making calls/building pipeline.

2). When being ‘sold to’ I cannot stand it when the salesperson, without knowing anything about me or my business, begins to tell me what I need/want/require in order to make my business better. By luck would have it, they also have the answer (to be expected).

What we’ve done with these seminars is ask the delegates what they want and need, then put it in the seminar.

It’s something that we try to achieve at Hillrich in everything we do: Ask our customers what they want or need and then go and deliver it. In my humble opinion, the correct way to go about selling anything.

So, with Sales being the order of the day with the delegates and (again, in my opinion) with sales being the single most important thing in any business, (NOTHING happens until a sale has been made) over the next few posts, I’m going to outline parts of a sales document that I constructed when we were building the DreamStart Conference.

In a nutshell, DreamStart was a precursor to Kirklees Business Conference, consisting of 75 exhibitors, 960-ish delegates, 14 seminars and two ‘Dreamers’ Den’ pitching areas. It was aimed at business owners across Yorkshire with the keynote speakers being Michael Gerber (he didn’t wear the hat!), Rachel Elnaugh and Feisal Nahaboo, amongst other ‘supporting acts’. In order to make the show a success we had to sell, and sell well. Excerpts of how we did it will appear shortly following this post.

They won’t be advice on how to sell or ‘Top Secret Tips’ or any of that twaddle, just parts of a document used when selling DreamStart. If it helps in your business, then great, as the principles within it are based on a framework of what I would do whatever I was selling. It’s all in the mind.

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