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Here is an old saying worth knowing: “There is a profound difference between failing, and being a failure.” This is why the best sales people make the most mistakes – they are constantly creating new ways of communicating with the market, which inevitably means that they always get things wrong…on the way to getting them right. However, their ‘failing’ with the new ways always takes place before they see a customer in a formal interview situation. Before ‘going to market’ they talk to customers and informally rehearse their new ways, and they also go through this practicing process with colleagues, friends and family. This is normal fare for people in the theatrical profession, but for most sales people the failing factor takes place in front of customers, and this of course leads to failure in two areas:

• Failure to satisfy customers and ‘make sales’
• Failure to understand what went wrong, because customers rarely say ‘I don’t want to buy but all is not lost, because I’d like to take a few moments to explain how pathetic you are at selling.’

In writing this article every week, you never get to see the mistakes I make for the obvious reason that I check and recheck, plus I always ask someone I trust to check it too. Why is this process not used extensively and consistently to train and prepare sales people, either by management or by the individuals themselves? The process of ‘selling’ is just about the worse run area of business, and the only people who really understand this dilemma are the customers! I occasionally receive an email from recipients of my weekly article asking for help with presentations, which I welcome, and I almost always ask the people in question to ‘call me to discuss the matter in more detail’. Hardly anyone calls, and this helps to confirm the awful attitudes of business people who say they want assistance!

Many people believe that those who ‘present well’ are born that way, which is absolute nonsense.

Here are two stories that underline the value of preparation. When I appear at conferences, either a manager or an MC will introduce me, using a sheet I provide for that purpose. Some people take the sheet from me, look it over very briefly and then find it difficult to read fluently when the time comes…and so, whether they realise it or not, they project an amateurish profile to a large number of people (some of whom are their staff or customers!). Others take the sheet from me, ask me questions and generally take the trouble to do justice to the introduction process. And just one manager, some years ago, took the sheet from me, asked some questions and then went about his business. When the time came for the introduction I was horrified to see that he didn’t have the sheet with him, but I needn’t have worried because he had memorised all the key points (not every word) and performed his task flawlessly. Bear in mind that the sheet in question takes less than 30 seconds to read, and so the lesson is ’30 seconds or 30 minutes, do it very well!’

The second story happened when I was marketing director at Schwarzkopf, and out of the blue one day our HR manager asked me if I would help her by welcoming a group of other HR managers that were meeting at our office…adding ‘because let’s face it, you are very good at that sort of thing.’ I said ‘If you feel I can add value I would be glad to help out, when is the meeting?’ She said ‘they are here now, in the studio’, and I immediately became a blithering idiot, delivering perhaps the worst welcome ever heard. She was right when she paid me the compliment, but what she didn’t know is that being ‘very good at that sort of thing’ is something I take very seriously, and something I cannot do without creative effort, also help from others now and then, and lots of hard work ‘getting ready’ to perform the task at hand…including something as seemingly innocuous as a 2 minute ‘welcome speech’.

Used intelligently, mistakes are the stepping-stones to progress and success in selling.