Lara Morgan: If you can learn to sell, you will make a profit | London Business School

I sort of think this sort of event is better if I just talk to you so I'm gonna go very quickly on the basis that I want to try and cover much more ground about stuff that really matters in terms of lessons and takeaway first is a story of selling soap for a living which is how I made my money so a bit of background I wasn't very loved as a child it's a very sad story so my parents who lived in Hong Kong sent me away to a boarding school in Scotland had also been born in Germany just to confuse me and my parents made me learn Chinese as a child so so far miserable absolutely miserable abandoned in a Scottish school with not much heating so it didn't get much better and the only upside is my school was more like a country club than an academic institution so that was quite useful and at the age of 17 my father then went bankrupt so I had to get a job I also had to get back home so they begged my grandparents to pay for the flight for me to get back from Scotland to Hong Kong and on the day I arrived home I was told that the bailiffs would be coming the next morning and I didn't know what they were they didn't teach you about bailiff suits and lenez because most people had a lot of money and so I was told not to bother unpacking and could I start paying rent in 10 days time because they thought that that was you know pretty reasonable so of course I did that the sensible thing I decided I'd be a golf pro and I announced this to my father who didn't give me enormous buy-in so what I did is I had got a job that allowed me to play golf in the morning and to sell premiums and giveaways in the afternoon and that was my first lucky break because I learnt about product working in Hong Kong and trading from a very early age of 18 where literally you know China was your sourcing ground and through Hong Kong most major companies were sourcing premiums in their ways so I learned about leather for HSBC folders and I learned to out inserts to Kellogg's cereal packets and how to make 40 million items really really quickly and how to pack them and I learned about how to deliver the irony of bicycles for more bruh cigarettes which was your reward in China if you smoked yourself to death and carried got enough vouchers so a quick learning curve then did that very very traditional career move I fell in love with a bloke and went and live in the Middle East I hear that's quite standard and in the Middle East there are no recruitment agent so I touted my somewhat slim CV around the office blocks and said you know look for a sales job I knew a bit about sales by then I'd had precisely zero sales training and I've been in Bahrain for three days when I got a call saying I'd quite like to meet you this Canadian Gerry Arnold from Bell Canada corporation was looking for somebody unbelievably gullible and I clearly had that tattooed across my forehead when I was interviewed and I took a job running 126 salespeople in five six countries of the Gulf State one of which I couldn't visit and I sold Yellow Pages advertising space great learning curve I learned about publishing I bought 90 million tons of yellow pages it's quite exciting printed made in Australia printed somewhere else and I ran this sales team that spoke many national many languages most of which I didn't speak I did have to sacrifice a lamb at one stage it was because one of my Bedouin salespeople had insulted another by throwing his shoe at him so that's quite also traditional as you know as a learning curve in business I also learnt balance sheet P&L and I had a half five hundred thousand US dollar budget to spend on advertising which is quite exciting when you actually don't know what advertising is and I used to cry at night and work very hard and I stayed there until the Gulf War came and then my then fiancee of HSBC got posted to New Zealand and I said that's lovely cycle for a while in New Zealand nice country and actually he then bloody well got a place to do an MBA at Cranfield so we ended up here in England much against my desire and I needed a job and it was 1991 and the truth is there were no jobs in the last recession for salespeople and I was very arrogant and I made a very stupid mistake first of all turning down this fantastic job opportunity to sell sewing kits and shower caps and I thought I'd get a job and actually I ended up calling that company back and saying I thought really on reconsideration I could make a future out of selling sewing kits and shower caps and that truthfully was because I couldn't get a bloody job and this Chinese factory who had approached me who made what our industry called hotel amenities is in your language the stuff that you Nick and take home when you stay in a posh hotel and I would like you to continue doing so I always say not molten brown because I've never made any money out of them and I still own 20% of a going concern called Pacific direct and the rough story goes that over the next 17 years from the age of 23 to the age of 40 I went from a very lonely one-man band for the first two years where I did speak most to myself but I set myself a reward I don't know if you have it at lb else but at Cranfield on the business school site they have this thing called the batty box which means you get lunch you know everybody goes in and has lunch together and I run it it's pathetic but that used to be my reward for making enough sales calls in the morning I got to go and have a sandwich with some people and then I'll go back to my miserable lonely flat and make more sales calls and and do every other job for the first two years of what was a startup business Pacific directors a one-man band I can honestly still tell you that the first two years of Pacific were the loneliest years of my life the hardest and I wouldn't do it that way again because I I didn't we didn't really know about mentoring and we didn't and I was 23 and I was just as I just thought that if I soloed relentlessly and kept listening to the customer I could develop a product and a and I was so wrong it's pathetic and and sir and somehow we survived we the Royal way that is I did everything and we did 108,000 in our first year and 306 we did three lara did three hundred and sixty thousand sales in her second year and then realize that I couldn't cope with working nearly every hour of the day so I went the traditional recruitment route and I employed the second noisiest person on my hockey team Rachel it's quite cheap doesn't involve headhunting course and I've generally found that the outspoken ones can sell and actually my recruitment route at the Hockey Club worked quite well so I employed my second member of staff there a year later she was a very very bright Margaret Oakley PhD who was returning to work and happen to be the wife of the most intelligent surgeon in the local area who liked hockey now why am I telling you that I'm telling you that because actually fundamentally my first two utterly geniusly planned recruits are probably the luckiest piece of the puzzle and unlike many many small companies who employ friends and/or you know don't really sound out and think through their first recruit you create so much potential for disaster I didn't have that and and I think by sort of in a bizarre way studying Rachel's skill set my first employee and getting to know Margaret over a year before I employed her I just I fundamentally lucked out at getting to great team members that helped me build this little business very quickly so in the year three we did eight hundred and eighty thousand pounds of business and we were making you know pretty good money so the business grew at this stage by the way we were selling just a bit more than sewing kits and shower caps were fundamentally I was learning all that I needed to learn as I went along by in effect asking the customer what it was they needed and providing solutions to their pain that actually is a translation for the rather inelegant word of sales it's a conversation and I think the most powerful message that I hope you get because I am incredibly biased is that if you can learn to sell I promise you that it you can make remember smus takes I have proven this and yet somehow you come out the other side with profit and with the lessons and maybe some scars and some interesting moments but actually going into a business and employing the right people from the get-go which is not easy and I know how lucky I have been but also having this skill of actually the only skill to be fair of selling that's an immense asset so for any of you that haven't been trained in sales think very hard about formalizing your competency in negotiating in sales I've been asked to share with you lessons and I think I just I feel so passionate about it I hope I've communicated that well so the sewing kit shower cap company listen listened to its customers and it had no business plan and we just kept innovating and providing solutions and somebody said to me you know can you do shampoo and I said well you know I haven't done shampoo before but you know what what do you mean and you said well I'm frustrated because I can only buy shampoos and shower gels with solid solid colored wool bottles and I'd quite like to have a clear bottle I think it looked nicer and I said to Tony he'll would I've done it before let me go and ask but you know if I can provide a solution you know ask the basic questions how BIG's the business and I'm suddenly thinking God and he's a lot more shampoo than they use shower caps and actually disaster struck very early in my first massive shampoo deal because we bought 30,000 shampoos in China and they were delivered and I was so excited that I had drove them down to Tony myself and was thrilled with the outer package of my brand name on on the box it's very exciting 500 shampoos and he called me just as I was driving away in a little bit less than chuffed because he discovered that all my shampoo bottles were half full and that's disappointing when they're clear because it looks like they used and the reason for that I discovered overnight was that the Chinese guy filling the shampoo had only got half the fill for 30,000 full bottles 15,000 full ones and he thought anywhere is enough to wash your hair with I have to say that did hurt at the time and I think it's it's just it's a good example of the resilience quality that you may have to have as you learn detail and as you learn that it's not going to go that smoothly and it's also probably not wise to celebrate and it's probably a good idea to QC the goods before you deliver them to the customer so there will be bad days but you have to look at yourself and you have to take that on the chin because on my purchase order it did not say so what level I wanted that shampoo filled I am rubbish at detail but I got a lot better a lot quicker when it was going to cost me money what I also did is I got Margaret so think about your skill set is a second very important message because we all do have strengths and weaknesses it's very easy for me because the only thing I can do is sell so everything else somebody else can do and and I promise you that if you can define the roles for as you evolve your business and you really define them clearly around what the job is that you need somebody to do and the skill set that they are going to have to have and then you worry about finding the right person you are much more likely to find the right person and trust that you're going to not overlap in the expertise but actually there's the big issue and Trust can you trust somebody else because as you grow and you build a business you will have to let go and you will not be able to do benevolent dictator if you're going to grow a considerable company Pacific direct grew very quickly and I got a bit carried away but let's just say I kept and Rachel kept selling and we did quite well and by about so it's 1991 when we started and in 1996 I European cosmetics regulations changed and we had to put labels on our bottles and my Chinese factory said that he didn't want to do that so David that's a bit of a problem so I then thought well it'd be a really good idea to go into manufacturing about which I know nothing and I like nothing another one of my genius decisions around strategy I didn't know that was strategy by the way and we ended up going into toiletries manufacturing which was again a piece of luck because what it ultimately meant is than when we became very big we were a global manufacturer and supplier and we could compete on a global scale wasn't my decision it was somebody else's in the e use2 stuff me up and I had to provide a solution quickly so why 1999 Pacific direct was 400 no 221 people we had five international offices I'd set up a factory in China I bought an organisation in the Czech Republic which actually when I visited it I discovered was to garriga's joined together making tubes and a liar called Martyn Samak who is basically as good as my second brother who sold me the tubes when he didn't even have the bloody machine to make them that is enterprise in order to deal with Jarvis's buying 36 hotels Martin and Oliver slept in the roof of the garage to continue tubes supply because every 18 minutes was the box of tubes that fed the one machine they had ran out and one of them would go downstairs and put the new box up overnight for 31 days in a row how hard are you willing to work for your enterprise Martin in the end owned 10% of the entire global equity of Pacific direct had he not got up at night he wouldn't have had that opportunity so how hard are you willing to really work for your business I cannot underline enough that not enough entrepreneurs talk about the very very serious hard and the importance to be I think fit and healthy in running your enterprise so don't don't discount the importance of that I'm not going to tell you that there's work/life balance because it's bollocks if you want to run a big successful high-growth international company you're going to bleed a bit you're going to sweat a bit you're sure as hell going to cry and there's going to be some really terrible days but actually you own those days and on reflection it makes a very good story so what do I think about Pacific in 1999 I looked around clutching at straws to find somebody that could help with this mayhem that was completely out of control we were in a cash-flow bind I'd grown the thing too quickly so I applied to Cranfield to the business growth development program in the full belief that I was going on the program with lots of other people who were having the same problems I was and of the 57 people in the room I was the only one trying to slow down because actually I was pretty much the only salesperson and I on that course I discovered that I was actually running the 57th fastest growing company in Britain independently year-on-year averaged dun and bradstreet independent report which I would never have known because I had never then yet read any business magazines so for all of those overqualified geniuses in the room let's just recap my education and let's talk through my very long list of qualifications which includes only the WH Smith business section for books and you don't get a badge that's how I built my business until 1999 and then I went to a course that Cranfield as I say and I wrote my first business plan so you can get nine years into a business do four and a half million pounds worth of sales make six hundred and sixty four thousand quid have two hundred and twenty one staff five or six officers can't remember a couple of factories and be utterly miserable I would have sold Pacific direct for fifty people even though I was making that money and the reason for that is is I'd got Internet fatal position of not doing what I like doing anymore but dealing with all the stuff as the business grew that meant I had to be responsible as I am in terms of putting my team first but no longer getting the chance to do what I'm good at so whatever you do there are these steps that now I have seen the education bit I've seen some of those graphs that do this and I know some of the words that talk about stages and but ultimately this is a stage and then there's a growth stage and then there's it's not really difficult to work out from there is it um but you're in a competition you're in a race and you need really good team players can you just visualize the Formula One changing tires everybody visualize that ten years ago how long did it take to change four tires on a Formula One card anybody know oh you're all real geeks that's really sad seconds how many seconds come on ten years ago yes about 12 seconds that's exactly right I think it was twelve point four actually depending on what time of the year well how long does it take now 2.8 so what's the lesson get better what you do if you practice and stay focused on it what do the red arrows do every time they go out and they have a bit of a fly they come back they go home no they do a complete review of the delivery system of what they delivered to the audience that day and they refine it and they refine it and refine it and my best analogy is that thing about taking four wheels off a car sticking some petrol in and off we go I think that's a great business analogy because if you have the right team players in the right areas with the right strengths and weaknesses and a very very clear role definition you might get away faster next time does that make sense to people is that I hope you remember that because I think it's a very powerful picture and I think it really relates to the fact that the other part of the business that I had done naturally through absolute paranoia and fear is I had studied the competition like a religious zealot because I wanted to know if they sneezed before I did and in Britain we think that's not very nice because we're a bit cricket like and it's bollocks again because the amount of stuff that you can learn from what the competition are doing and from what actually you notice that they're not doing so you might exploit benefits that you do first thing I did is I started to understand that they were all giving delivery free yet 250 pounds so I worked out my average orders and I worked out I could give free delivery at 200 pounds point of difference at every stage I wanted to beat the competition in service terms and if you don't study them how can you know that you're going to do that so treat every element of your business as a race as wanting to be the best and set outrageously high standards from the moment that you recruit and tell people on the way in so this was my favorite line in the recruitment environment at Pacific direct you will never work harder you will give your outs of flesh I'll probably take more by the way hopefully you won't notice I really hope you enjoy the journey and if at any time you're having a problem please come and see me so nobody can claim that they didn't know it was going to be horrific ones that said yes because clearly I would smile when I had asked them whether that would be a problem or not they knew what they were coming in for they knew the ride and I was very lucky to still own 99% of Pacific when I sold it in 2008 for twenty point two million pounds which by the way I didn't know was that exceptional hadn't really looked around me I was a bit busy selling soap so continual improvement the team effects the race and the competition setting their expectations early and I'm not going to bore you shitless about the importance of communication but I am going to tell you that it is boring to talk about communication so it's much much better to innovate with your communication and to do it differently one of the most powerful things you can get is a scrap of paper and a group of people into a room who write on their scrap of paper three great ideas for something we should do better something you might not know about Lara I thought I'd tell you and by the way did you know this great thing that so-and-so did the other day I've had everything from could we have more teaspoons in the kitchen and the real reason was because penny wanted to get back to her desk quicker because she around customer services and she therefore wanted to make the tea and coffee around quicker all the way through to a guy who we employed as a apprentice and he said you know why didn't you use the traffic light system and I'm thinking piece of paper traffic light system better go and ask what that means because I don't know anything about this stuff and he said well no I've got this stock list that you've given me and what you said is if I can work out how we can focus better and I just said so what I did is I sorted it and I just highlighted anything red that haven't been moving in the last X many weeks you're a bloody genius lad so we then started applying the speed color chart to lots of the xl's I ran the business on Excel until it was four and a half a million quid we had no systems that's quite cool I've quite good at Excel but it's just another one of my mistakes we did invest in a CRM but the point is is that communication example of just innovating and getting people to focus on the right stuff is utterly vital so not just the idea of the scrap of paper but actually the brilliance of getting your team on board and really giving them the voice and not paying lip service to it I mean I I I cannot believe how many times I hear inverted commas management saying no no we we include our team in everything and I say oh and then you ask a few very very simple questions and they'll admit actually well no we don't really do it that way around here but really so people don't really have clear targets and you know at the most basic basic level we're in the real world it's competitive employ people that want to be in the a grade area of your organization and accept nothing better nothing worse because a grade players make for a grade teams which make for a grade results and I say it and it's so simplistic to say oh my god is it hard to do so the other thing that you need to spend an unbelievable amount of time on is getting recruitment right and how do you do that well that's the lottery but you can play the lottery and you can minimize the risk by being utterly rigorous about your culture and about investing in looking in the market and about networking relentlessly and about having really clear ways of cents checking are you employing a knife-wielding maniac from hell or otherwise I mean we use things like Thomas international for psychological tests but the truth is we only really applied 10% of it but it did stop us making some wrong decisions there was a whole nother 90% of stuff that we did to make sure that we were getting the right fit people for the right role that they could work with other members of the team those things are so important particularly when literally you need to set up set up a Singapore office so what do you do a Singapore office it's so glorious meet che see she's it well where did chasey came from why are most powerful things I can tell you that again I learned far too late but I apply with absolute vigor is I will pay a huge price for the leading salesperson in any territory of any country from my competitors to start a new office in a new territory is that fair is it right it's your choice but if you want an accelerated start in a market place pay the price get the best salesperson that's been in your industry and you will have a massive head start the idea of employing you know an English person in Singapore is frankly barking mad and the same applies for the reason that I had a Scotsman in Scotland the Americans are a law unto themselves let's leave it aside internationalizing your business possibly you know what can I tell you I I don't know how we became international other than I just managed to cobble together this awesome team of people who understood what Pacific Direct was about and they bought into the the vision and the mission that were very clear about being number one at what we did and and I am so proud of though the delivery and the trust that we had in people in as I say nine offices in many cases one-man-band in the initial days that then grew and you know those people are the difference between your international success and failure so how often are you going to touch base with them there were nights when I might be at an event like this and then I would be driving home for an hour or two and I would school literally in order depending on the time zone maybe six other members of my team in different places around the world to touch base at least on a weekly basis as the owner of the business with those people leading those organizations and in the morning at 6:00 I would ring China on the way to work because they're the first ones up and or Australia or then after we open that and you just work your way work 24 hours of the day you don't have to if you put great people in their places but you have to look after those people I don't think I need to summarize but it's about selling it's about flicking hard work it's about not holding on to too much equity just enough to mean majorly control what you're doing it's a competition it's teamwork it's all the usual stuff but I hope that sort of gives you a picture and obviously it was all very easy are there any questions yes well I mean with Rachel who genuinely was on the same hockey team as mine I'd watched her for I don't know two seasons to see what kind of character she was and I actually trapped her in my car one day so she had to put up with me for half an hour so she so I could just listen and find out what kind of human being she was and actually because I was only 25 when I employed her I sort of called I said to her you know I'd quite like to come and talk to you but I know you still live at home and I sort of was interviewed by her dad who worked for NatWest and I have to say it was the it that still in my mind is the biggest people decision I've ever made because you know I'm 25 and I felt and I've always felt that once you employ somebody you pay their mortgage right their family depend on you you come second after your first employee and then when you've got a second one you come third and that's the way it works and the answer is I went with my gut I knew she could do the job and with Margaret I'd you know I'd watched her do fundraising for the hospital with her genius husband who are just some of the most generous people you'll ever met and I you know I sort of pinch myself that she even said yes and joined me but Margaret liked her work so much that she used to forget to pick up her children at the school game genius yeah yes do you does it help if I read back the question into the mic okay so you give a lot of importance to recruiting the right people to grow your business how did you make those decisions I mean did you give passion and hard work that they could offer more importance than qualification or how would you you're gonna hate this all of you I employ on attitude not aptitude and in the early days actually you really can do that because you're not looking for the genius skillset but then I'll tell you a story about Richard Percival which kind of counteracts that might give you some hope for the future so when I finally grew up and I went to cram field and I came out and I'd been miserable and I decided I needed this plan part of my plan was get a bloody general manager go back to selling so we then actually we did employ a headhunting agency because I was convinced that that was the right way to go and we ran an immensely challenging recruitment I had an argument for seven weeks with the Sunday Times because I wanted to imagine an advert is usually printed with lines like that well I bought the 1/8 page but I I printed the words new perspective and then I did the advert like that right it took me seven weeks to say it's my space I'll do what I like and the compromise was I had to write new perspective because then it didn't look like they printed it wrongly that's what they were worried about we got eight hundred and eighty applications for that job which was more than Hoggett bowers had ever had and i just liked the idea because we'd we'd appeal to the nation in terms of our culture and all I laughed about is all these people reading the ad like this I just really that was us slightly looking at things differently and that's very important and Richard and then five others came to a final interview day when they were whittled down he was a number two in Reebok and he was so impressive by the way when he went came for his days interview he'd memorized every member of my team's name in the UK office and he'd had the cunning to be able to get an organic Ram and their pictures and know them before he turned up and I never knew that until he turned up and we then sat down he made his presentation he met the different team flora we then met you know I knew I was going to have to pay him a lot of money and I had to pay him one hundred and twenty six thousand pounds plus his car and all the other stuff at a time when I was paying myself 24 so maybe there's hope right there's got to be other people me so the answer to your question I think is I knew Richard was right and he had the right attitude and he really wanted to be in Pacific and he was the first person actually that had done the deal about I was going to he was going to earn 5% equity over a year of proof but actually then September the 11th happened he didn't join until a later period because he had a long notice and he was the first one to volunteer for redundancy because he knew when September the 11th happened we were in a car crash because people didn't sleep in hotels we went from 88% usage and occupancy to 6% in night that's quite hard I think you're taught to deal with 20% try 80 to 60 years just horrific yes the back should we write there right I think and you mentioned that you felt that it was a mistake for you to retain 99% of the business can you just elaborate on that why was that mistaken how we would do it differently again I'm told I have to say it's a mistake because nobody else does it so I regurgitate that and I always wonder if someone will ask and the answers the question is is that I can't honestly say that my team would have worked any harder because these people were mad right they loved working at Pacific they liked working with each other they had a riotous time and I can't believe anybody could have worked harder in that organization but I'm told that you know I should have had a better equity structure and that maybe I would have you know maybe I would have attracted higher caliber people but actually my team were world class and so do I now and honestly now when I have businesses I make sure that there's an equity pot or that when it's a you know when it's a considerable shareholding of my own and I can afford to do that because I'm still greedy and controlling and I would really advocate that but you know I still think there should be a management pot because I'm told you can you know and what people should be made to put skin in the game it's not a gift they either earn it or they pay for it because it's not real to them it hasn't cost them any pain like yours has to build does that does that answer your question you know 99% don't get me riled so gave away two million quid in cash to the team that I haven't given equity to which is the most enormous ly fun thing to do I mean people collapsed it was very funny you know with joy and it's an incredible honor to you know pay for someone's mortgage but they turned it I just haven't done it the right professional way yeah and I've learned that less and I won't do that again yeah there was a question up here thank you really enjoyed the presentation um I run a small company and with seven people and I'm not a salesperson we've got one and a half salespeople and I'm the half how does one motivate somebody to to go out there and sell because I don't think it's only about the money if that might may not all be about the money it's not a lot about the money it's not a salesperson so I used to work at IBM and I went to the sales day where they rewarded the top IBM salesperson and the reward was a vat of one-pound coins and he had 60 seconds to take as many of the coins he possibly could and he was he was seriously considering swallowing them to take more so how do I reward salespeople to get the most out of them I mean genuinely genuinely if you I mean first of all if you honestly don't believe you're a salesperson company shortcuts which is my sort of legacy Learning Company which is teaching sales in Britain has an event on the 16th of October and you will never learn more in a day and if you and you need to know how to sell to run a sales group or actually to to see what the set because the sales strategy is the engine for the growth of your business and nobody can argue with me over that if you don't sell you don't have a business you don't need a bloody logo you don't need a website you don't even need a business card you have to sell something right so to motivate salespeople fundamentally and genuinely I will not employ somebody that isn't money hungry that's what drives sales people they like bloody gadgets and fast cars and and big diamonds and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that as long as I earn more than they did I'm serious I'm really brutally up I also think though that you've got to understand that there are different types of salespeople and there is I I suspect I'm out of date but you know the classic hunter farmer the hunter is the one that you want out highly revved up and you want to take anything that involves box filling away because characteristically we and I count myself among hunters very proudly are filling in boxes we don't do it we don't like Minn right we have to play by the rules and we have to really set out what the rules are but if you give six sweeper uppers to a great hunter you'll sell more than if you give a hunter the job but that has some admin with it do you see what I mean because what they like is they like selling target wise I mean you know I'm I absolutely don't set targets that aren't achievable I just see that as a pointless exercise but it's an agreed target with qualified lead understanding you know it's a grown up process it's a professional review of the market and it's an you know and it's not a forced upon ridiculous will grow at 10% this year whoopee isn't that really exciting that keeps the shareholders happy if you can grow 500% grow at 500% put the structure you may not be able to you know you've got a cash flow the affordability of structure but truthfully we're so unambitious in our sales approach and we don't tog don't employ salespeople that aren't willing to starve on their starvation salary because they should live and die by what they make in selling that's what it should be it's what they you know and I do advocate the American model which is highly commission orientated I think it works Britain we're so wet we really are what else so selling motivation I mean ritual beatings what I mean I meant ritual meetings and so what I really mean is actually I mean going out with the salespeople and sense checking that they're speaking the right language so if I came into your organization and met your sales person tomorrow can they pitch to me the real vision and purpose of what your business your product and your service is because if they can't you haven't even got a sales team you've got somebody's selling somebody else a message which is already creating chaos because it's not a product you want to deliver do you see what I mean and so at the most basic level genuinely genuinely there's some great sales books the girl that runs company shortcuts might partner has a sales books it's secretive sales I can circulate the you know in basic steps of the sale every sale has a process of you know going out fact-finding making a presentation of your business listening to what the customers got to say about the product identifying and qualifying the opportunity making a recommendation putting in a proposal that is and by the way at every stage before any of those asking for the order which by the way girls wear at doing and if we did we'd wheat them hands down because we do all the other bloody work and then they sneak in and ask first we don't get it right really focus on so I'm not honest so I understand the team event right and actually what what always happens in organizations and it's a great question in the sense that it's you know it's ridiculous but it happens time and time again is you have the great divide by the pre-madonna salesperson but actually what the leader then has to remind pre-madonna salesperson you ain't going to deliver it without that side of the room right and that's where I mean we have some issues like that in some of the different businesses and culturally there was stuff I had to learn about facilitation exchanges and having a conversation and saying is stupid bugger if you keep promising that they ain't going to deliver because it's not what we do right and having a real respect so aren't practical things do your customer service people go out with your sales team to see what they do do they understand how bloody tough it is running around with a pile of samples that weighs a sodding ton it's not as glamorous as all that I can tell you and as soon as they they go flip I shall just stay in customer services a lot more comfortable sit down here it's very nice it's very much take calls and then you know does the sales administrator go out and meet the customer and is the sales administrator part of the commission unit that the sales persons earning are they motivated to get the quote out quickly it's a joined up event everybody should be rewarded I think that's really important and at different stages of your business you should set different reward mechanisms to motivate the team so in 2004 my team set their own target make a million quid in 12 months I'll take you to Barbados that's what we did government then charge me another 17 grand for tax bastards true yeah but what can you do it's creative but the team set the target not me so you got to start with an open organization and we are really poor at that you know my team knew if we made money if we lost money on a monthly basis they had we have the Richard genius Richard from Reebok bought a process where we had a company weekend away in January every year and it happened by the way when we were six people in a caravan in France sadly two of the staff got frozen into their Caravan I didn't learn and I couldn't understand why they were late for the morning meeting but we did it on the cheap right you know they did end up in Barbados those two people a few years later but the learning thing of putting everybody in a room is saying here's our vision for the year ahead and in Richards case he invented the the Magnificent Seven and had the music and the razzmatazz and I'd get my tongue as he employed a bloody video lot and this all this Reebok bollocks of noise yeah an expense because I thought well he's the new general manager I gotta trust that and and he set us on such a great path for the year ahead and everybody knew what they were doing so from then on in every year we had company weekend away and we announced the goals for that year ahead and it was so powerful that is priceless stuff you know so that's communication but it's innovation it's not just dull let's all turn up to a meeting that's not yes sir fantastic doc with you which I would pissed I understand you know yeah if you like field operations I have made products I can understand selling is equally tough if making is tough now coming from a different perspective the channels of shopping or changing your shipping and we're going to online channels yes in such a set of which you foresee that's a great question were you in Pimlico fresh this morning having breakfast at all no because I was speaking with Nicola about how selling is changing right and we want to be at the cutting edge of teaching the new changing because I think a lot of it is going to be about inbound sales team and you've actually reminded me and it's not without being timely I want to introduce you to somebody very special who's going to teach you a bit about selling right now and I'm I just warn you because he's a very interesting character and and actually I think it's an important lesson that about persistence which is the point I'm going to end on because I think we are running out of time so Alastair is going to present a product to you in about two three minutes but I'll tell you that he's very dangerous not just balding but he's a stalker and maybe this is a lesson on how to tie down finance into your business so Alastair approached me what is nearly three years ago and the persistence with which which he put into the mission to meet me initially was impressive to say the least and then him dealing with the I guess one might call it the Lara treatment now that you've met me which was a list of 19 these are really things Alastair go I'm not investing in your crap product company bounced back two years later he grabbed me at a trade show and he said let me show you what I've done and he's going to present that product to you and are now very proud to tell you that I'm a 49% shareholder in gate eight luggage so I want him to as payback to present to you the best piece of travel luggage for executives that we're working on and if there's any of you that spot a fault or you think we could do better or you have an experience about luggage that we could learn from or ultimately if you want to buy one that would pay me back to but the point is is that it's a lesson in resilience and in persistence and if you don't have those business quality start practicing them now because it will make you money at the beginning of this year I think we were selling very few of these products this product is now rocketing Alistair take it away okay can you hear me obviously I'm not that dangerous okay so I'll be very brief or no I will do the products demonstrate support just put a bit of context around how I met Lara I was quite a boring probably celeb the quite a boring IT consultant for many years doing lots of short haul trips Europe some nice places like Edinburgh Glasgow etc do being fantastic IT solutions addressing all the problems and in sales I was in delivery and it was during those years that I began to experience the frustrations that the airlines were imposing on predominately the business traveler but I was also doing some leisure travel typically when to three business days a week which is accounts for about 86 percent of your business travel and and the company that I was employed by were often using the budget airlines as well the value for money airlines and they started to impose even stricter regulations so the single bag carry on policy so I would you know scroll up with my imposed a slightly larger laptops my garlic bag and I would have to pay the 60 euros whatever the fee was because I had two bags so I started to think about how I could address those challenges at mobile there was an entrepreneurial spirit within me and hopefully Lara will kind of released that and show my true potential so I sort of think about what I could do so I put some designs together and as long as I flew out to Hong Kong went to a fair make some factories went into China for a couple of weeks and then bumped into Laura's brother and I was at that point exploring how I could grow the business I thought had a great product I thought it was fantastic I thought this is going to make my millions you know in six months and put the the full-time job and I'd see by me I was very wrong aleck Laura's brother suggested that I speak to Laura so I went to Laura full of enthusiasm highly motivated is that point Laura gave me the the 19 point failure plan as you can see low is very very straight talking and I went away and it's life that I addressed all of those challenges and we came up we came up with the brand gates and this is our hero product and as Laura said yeah from selling as low as one to two three bags a month we're now up in you know nearly hundred bags a month so it's growing fast it's quite scary had some great publicity recently we're in the Sunday Mail we're in The Times going to be in The Telegraph so people are really interested in what that not only the product the more the story and what Lara is doing you know to help kind of startups like myself phenomenal to see very very thrilled and very proud to have lar or down sewing to preserve the product now so this product I do ruffle this product is all airline compliant it is carry-on for all the airlines and it addresses the single bag carry on policy so the belt a product they all come with for example the wefts bag but you can put your toiletries in so you can negotiate airport security in the back here if you are traveling with laptops laptops up to 17 inch can go in here they're equally now we are catering for and have the pockets for the iPads netbooks all your technology is fully protected so maybe once you've got through airport security and you've boarded the flight you want to work in your seats or alternatively you at the hotel need to go to the conference the exhibition you have the option of zipping this off leaving your garments in the hotel so you can now travel off to the office the meeting your garments are now fully protected and ready to wear - zips either side you unfold once and you can release the gate eight shirt blouse carrier so inside here we comes with a very clever folding board she fold your shirts blouses around the board and we put on the back a very handy Travel checklist so you won't forget any of those essential items your shirts and browsers will be ready to wear and if you need formal tires etc they also the tyre loops there and there are accessory pockets in there so that's your shirts blouses etc and this will hang straight into the wardrobe so it comes with a hook like so hopefully this will hold up here yep so now we're garments are ready to wear so this these hangers bare and the hooks there there is a shoe pocket at the base as well and for your undergarments you have these pockets like so and for the return trip there is a laundry pocket on that side like so and this will allow just maybe packs back together like so you put the hook back in its pocket just fold it up like so like so and then this over see it's on wheels so it has the handle there you have the option if you're only going between that's execution holes and you want to avoid unzipping the laptop bag on and off comes with the sleeve on the back so you have the option of traveling like so thank you very much my pleasure thank you you

Channel: London Business School

Views: 92,939

Keywords: YouTube Editor, lara morgan, pacific direct, lbs, london business school, learn to sell, tell series, british entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship

Id: KLu3H0biMk8

Length: 55min 7sec (3307 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 23 2014