Buliding Customer Service, Then Sales Teams
This early success led to the decision to expand these efforts and to grow a team to continue these efforts.
At the same time, I had started to represent the company at exhibitions and events after one of our local sales agents started to let us down. I also supported our national network of agents at industry shows in Edinburgh and Dublin and at local events across the country.
Within a few months, we had moved to larger offices and expanded our after-sales service call centre team. The referrals kept rolling in and we kept on converting them into new sales.
I grew the team to over 20 members of staff, most of whom I was able to take with me to the exhibitions and events that we now ran every weekend.
These events soon became solely my responsibility to organise and lead. Some of these events were our own local events in Surrey and London, while others were large industry property exhibitions that required large teams to adequately staff.
Our above-target results and high conversion rates were noticed across the group, as was the high standard of training and presentation at our exhibitions.
My First Sales Team
While enjoying this level of success and the rewards that accompany it, it was obvious that there was still more that could be done. We were competing with the leaders in the market and winning by a growing margin.
The Managing Director and I agreed that it was time to create a dedicated sales team for the UK Head Office.
I had been gathering and creating training information, collateral and had refined it's use through the after-sales team. Each of these members of staff had a training and information manual that could be used in their day-to-day customer service duties and leant itself perfectly to the task of training new sales personnel.
The team christened these folders, their Bibles. They contained our entire accumulated knowledge of our products, processes, customer advice and every related issue that mattered to the people that expressed an interest in the possibility of buying from us.
We started with a team of 5 dedicated head office sales personnel, which allowed me to run several exhibitions even trade shows, at a time and to follow up on the large volumes of referrals and enquires that were generated each week. I could also call upon volunteers from the aftersales team and from other departments to complete the sales teams at these events.
All the way through, I led by example and maintained my own sales target while I supported my team to exceed their own targets.
Competing Sales Ideologies
I started to sell with my new team in the same way as I had been up to that point, but now came under pressure from my Managing Director to compete and sell in-line with our competitors, and their weapon of choice was to employ pressure sales techniques.
Pressure sales was not something that I was comfortable with and had enjoyed too much success with the methods that I used to want to jeopardise the level of engagement and trust that we had created up to that point with our prospects, so I took a stand and struck a deal.
I proposed that we be allowed to continue to sell, based on qualifying prospects and guiding them towards their goals, rather than pressure them into a sale. If at any point we failed to hit our targets, we would switch techniques and employ pressure sales tactics, as directed.
Resisting the pressure to pressurise clients, was the best decision that we could have made. We educated prospects on the decision that they were making. We answered all of their questions without trying to dodge any and filled in the gaps in the customer's knowledge with the information that they would need to make a truly informed choice.
At the same time, we were able to qualify these leads as part of the same process.
This approach set us apart from our competitors and allowed us to win customers that they had alienated with their overly aggressive approach.
This meant that we had to know every answer before the question was asked. The training and training packs succeeded to a large extent and left us to work with just the obscure queries.
As a result my teams consistently exceeded their sales and conversion targets as a team and as individuals.
Our sales cycles were also much shorter than our competitors, due mainly to the way that we proactively volunteered the essential information that enabled them to complete their research.
Our approach made our position so strong that at exhibitions we would send visitors to our stand to our competitors and sign them up when they returned. We encouraged the comparison, as it helped the prospective customers to find clarity and to choose us to look after their purchase.
The lesson that I take from this is that you can't short-change the sales process (or customer's buying process), without short-changing your results. You have to be your prospect's absolute advocate.
Further Expansion
We started to attend more shows and even expanded our agency network to include overseas locations with large British communities including Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong and had aslo established an agency in Poland.
As the UK Head Office, were now not just selling locally, we were regular visitors to the isle of Man, Channel Islands and every wothwhile overseas and investment property exhibition in London and the Home Counties as well as some major investment, travel and lifestyle events.
These shows were typically aimed at consumers and as such were held at weekends when they could attract the most people. It meant that I was asking my staff to work 7 days a week, as I had been doing from my earliest exhibitions.
By this time, we had also bought our own 3 storey building to allow for our continued expansion.
We didn't need to borrow a penny of the £2 million cost. We immediately occupied the bottom 2 floors, which gave us space for a showroom, and training space.
Our trade show stands moved out of the shell schemes and into our own 100sqm custom-made stand that was produced to my design.
We continued to recruit
I was soon able to call on more than 100 members of staff to sell at these shows had developed team leaders that could take responsibility for their teams and exhibitions.
This allowed me to staff the Ideal Home Show for it's entire 3 week duration while running at least 2 other events each weekend and still have a full sales team in the office during the week.
The Sales Mangement Challenge
It became apparent that I needed to up my game in order to coordinate and train a team of this size.
It simply was not possible to be hands-on in the same way that I was able to be only a few months before.
I started to study different sales mangement and training methodologies to help me to continue to deliver the highest possible level of support and started to identify and develop potential leaders from my teams in addition to those who had already shown natural aptitude and commitment. With these established team leaders, I started to delegate more responsibility.
I started to deliver formal training sessions and workshops for the sales and customer service staff and before individual events. The training and training manuals were designed to provide the answers to just about every question that we had beed asked by customers and contained all necessary paperwork and information that could be given to customers and used to guide them through almost every area of concern.
The results continued to be staggering.
Our very experienced agents would convert approximately 65% of qualified leads.
My sales teams would convert at least 85% and even hit entire months where there were 100% conversions.
This led the head office for the group to take notice and to approach us with a request that would stretch me even further.
What Did I learn?
International Operations
Customer Administration
International Property Sales
Event Marketing
Agent Management
Event Logistics
Event Promotion
Customer Service Training
Customer Service Process Design
Customer Service Team Management
Sales Management
Sales Operations
Remuneration Formulation
Sales Training Methodologies
Sales Training Delivery
P&L Reporting
Event Design
Event Sales
Sales Process Design
High Value Sales
Consultative Sales
Consumer Sales
Lead Qualification
Buyer Process Recognition
Advisory-Based Sales
Sales Target Management
Sales Coaching
Product Training
Leadership Training
Personnel Development
Team Evaluation
Budget Management
KPI Formulation
Recruitment
P&L Calculation
Departmental Budgets
Collateral Creation
Event Presentation Skills
Team Management
Exhibition Space Design
Client Liaison
Partner Evaluation
Partner Management
Negotiation Skills
Objection Handling
Agency Development
Advertiser Sourcing
PR
Recruiting
Procurement
Team Development
Team Delegation
Decision Making
Prioritising Resources
Time Management
Prospect Advocacy
Team Building
Team Incentivisation
Team Motivation
Leadership Skills
Process Design and Migration
And the art of being in 6 different places at the same time...(obviously)