Media & Marketing:Talk to any business - big or small - and the people they really cherish are individuals who can sell writes Siobhan O'Connell
Yet in the corporate pecking order, the sales function has always fed off the crumbs from the marketing table.
Partly that's because marketing means budget and spend, while sales is picking up the phone or hitting the road. But it's also because, in the past, sales professionals never banded together in institutes, like other professional groups.
Now that is changing. The Sales Institute of Ireland (SII), which held its annual conference in Croke Park yesterday, has grown to 2,000 members since it was founded in 1995. Delegates heard from chairwoman Barbara McGrath that the institute's training programmes recently secured full Hetac approval. In addition, the institute has been approved for funding from Skillnets.
Even with the best training, sales is never easy. That's why, when sales pros gather to talk shop, they also like to hear a few good selling tips. On hand at the conference was Andy Bounds, who is modestly described on his website as someone who is "an expert at showing companies how to write and deliver sales pitches that win".
Bounds (38) claims to have developed a new approach to pitching that he says has increased the sales of every company that has used it. This corporate sales guru says his unique slant on communication stems from the fact that his mother is blind, giving him a lifetime of explaining things from someone else's point of view.
So what's his secret of sales success? Actually, a lot of what Bounds tells companies is "annoyingly simple", as he admits himself. He gives an example: "When you're selling, you should always put your main selling points at the beginning of your presentation rather than at the end. People's memory is generally weighted to the beginning of what they see rather than the end."
He added: "The magic formula for any successful presentation is to display utter certainty, be able to show the potential client the future and then tell how you will get them there. When you are making presentations, don't put too many words on each slide of the Powerpoint. Men in particular can't see and hear at the same time. And remember - facts tell, stories sell. That means show by example what your company can do."
Other Bounds tips include making sure you talk to your customers once a month for nothing more than just saying hello, and do what you say you will do when you say you will do it. "The main reasons customers stop buying from someone in sales is overwhelming apathy. Those who constantly miss a deadline, even by just a day or two, leave a bad impression," he said.
Another keynote speaker at the conference was Paul Sloane, author of The Innovative Leader and a former top salesman with IBM. In Sloane's view, "if you're not innovating, you're going to be put out of business. One of the best ways to innovate is to pinch other people's ideas. One of the best ways to innovate is to go and see what people are doing in California, in Holland, in Singapore and in Shanghai and come back. And if you're the first person doing it in Ireland, you're an innovator."
He added: "Sales professionals should become ideas carriers - they're carrying a virus and the virus is a fresh idea, and they give it to their customers. And it doesn't have to be a fresh idea that relates specifically to their products; it has to be an idea that helps his or her business. So, if you can understand their business problems and you see something in a magazine or on the internet, you clip it and send it to them; you say 'hey, I thought of you and I thought you'd be interested in this'.
Ultimately, what a sales professional is trying to become is a trusted adviser. What people need these days is people who understand business and people who've got lots of ideas." Marketing counsel got a look-in too at the event in the form of Simon Burke, executive chairman of Superquinn. According to Burke: "To build a long-term and sustainable brand from a point of disadvantage in the market, you have to differentiate your brand from your bigger competitors and not design your offer with the aim of overtaking your rivals.
"Instead, design a different offering for which there is a sufficient number of customers for you to market to. It's a fatal marketing error to try to be all things to all people. The most successful brands are always the most focused."
