Sales Presentation in the Sun

Just back from a Club La Costa “Holiday Club” presentation in Spain.

It wasn’t business – it wasn’t “mystery shopping” or strategy advice – it was pure family time – although this blog is a reflection of my (business)thoughts on CLC (couldn’t resist!) and I must say front up, that I was pleasantly surprised overall.

On the face of it, things seem to have moved on (thank heaven!) from the smarmy, pressured and corny days of pure, timeshare selling. Our rep, Paul was polite, professional and well trained – to a point.

However, there were areas where the format felt “insular” to that industry, which is a common for many direct sales environments – especially those operating on a UK base. By that, I mean that the format seemed like an “in-house” hand-me-down script (from manager to manager to rep) with precious little innovation coming in from outside the industry. In the US, we find that cross industry training gives tremendous benefits and stops the “we’ve done it that way for years” attitude. In short, sometimes a breath of fresh, clean air is needed.

However, our rep had only been doing the job for a month – so if that were the case, then he is to be applauded for the way he went about things. There were a number of issues…appointment was for 10.15 – he arrived on the dot of 10.00. I mentioned this to him and explained that my wife and daughter were not yet ready and he laughed and simply said “cheap Japanese watch” – more like “cheap Japanese excuse”.

The breakfast time was wasted. As a company, we do many breakfast meetings and within a couple of minutes, we’re down to business – it’s expected. Here, it was small talk, when he could have used the time productively and started to find out what made us tick. He occasionally resorted to “laddish” comment, which I’d put down to inexperience at this stage.

Sellers must remember that punters may know an awful lot more about something than you think you do – so unless you really know your stuff, beware of claims about kitemarks and how BS9002 operates! And claiming that you’ve closed 7 out of 9 deals (by Thursday evening that week) could be taken as either mightily impressive or total fantasy – depending on who you’re talking to! (sorry, but I went with the latter – but would buy the beer if I’m wrong – although the numbers going through my head are …60 reps all closing say 4 a week average = 240 per week = say 10,000 a year….mmmmmm???…)

The presentation also needs to be geared to the type of prospect you have sitting in front of you and I fear that here it would be the same format for “whoever” – regardless. And if you’re going to throw in an observation – for example…”you wouldn’t buy a car by looking at a picture in the Exchange & Mart” – make sure that your manager is not going to say EXACTLY the same thing a few minutes down the road!

However, to Mr Average Punter, Paul would be classed as a pleasant, knowledgeable rep who they’d probably be happy doing business with. The format that Paul & Mark (the manager) worked to was IMHO “lightweight” and left the benefits to do the closing for them.

Having paid no attention to either investigation or qualification of the prospect, any objections were only dealt with at the end. Way too late – should have been cleared very early on. And it took the shine off the deal on the table. Also, I couldn’t understand why the top figure for the full package was written down and then immediately crossed through – what’s all that about?

Loads of other observations, but the moral of this little story (if there is one is to question, question, question, everything you do when you’re working in a  face to face selling environment – don’t fall into the trap of believing that a certain method or phrase is “the grail” – times are tough out there and we all need to be that bit sharper and prepared to change – sometimes dramatically.

Holiday over – it’s now back to the M6 tomorrow!