I have spent the past 30 years in different environments selling, from professional services, education and training, sport, short term property rental- home and abroad as well as a little bit of food retail in my early years. I consider myself good at it, unlike operations where I have always employed others to lead – sometimes let down but that’s for another article another time.
Most recently I have spent some time supporting my wife’s new businesses – one of them is all about direct selling to business post covid-19. A totally new product, a new market in a new world.
I thought I knew lots about selling, building sales teams, deploying them with incentive packages – my last business had over 90 full time sales staff, of which more than 50% at any time were underperforming.
This time Sarah has approached it differently – no rocket science – simply deploying people to sell for her using their networks and on a commission basis. These aren’t 20-something youngsters in smart suits without much of an idea, these are experienced individuals with a black book to die for. So it got me thinking – use it In the skills sector in the new normal – it’s not brokerage because every consultant has a contract and are deployed by us. The payroll costs are nil, the results are simply incredible – Sarah has been able to get into businesses she could never of dreamed of and guess what all at very senior levels.
I kick myself that I didn’t use this approach years ago In my apprenticeship business and I continue to see all providers following the same models of recruiting ‘business development executives’ or other wonderful titles. I spent far too much of my time previously dealing with underachieving recruitment executives and all of their excuses
Now is the time to be brave, be innovative, create new models (see my next article) in our new normal – and as employers, you need to keep costs down.
Combine this with some targeted ad wording and you are away!
Give me a call if you want to talk through new ways of selling. As with all promote-Ed activities, free of charge.
Sign up for a free webinar on the 09/06/2020 at 2.00pm by yours truly on tips on how to sell
Sign up here https://promote-ed.co.uk/events/a-new-way-of-selling/
