Advanced Sales Techniques - Doug Osborne

Sales Presentation

Advanced Sales Techniques

Back in 2010 one or two of us here at Impact Factory thought 'you know what, let's see if we can put something together that allows really good sales people to see exactly what they do when they are in full flight'.

So we did and more on that later..

Personal Journey of Advanced Sales Techniques

But first here's my personal sales journey as an enthused new kid on the block; by the time I had skipped the good ship GSK and catapulted my way into the music business it was the mid nineties. This was an amazing time for dance music. Technology was leaping forward, driving the development of new studio equipment that led to a new genre almost every month. It was a time of iconic songs – many of which still pack the ‘best of’ dance genre CDs and MP3s now.

My raw enthusiasm for dance music must have been very evident – I had my nose in everything, I knew everyone, I could talk to my clients (at the cutting edge dance music distributor I had secured a role at) about product that hadn’t even made it out of the studio yet.

Head of Procurement Advanced Sales Techniques

The company's client list grew – and grew. Something I was doing was spot on. In a matter of nine months I was head of procurement – buying in product from ten countries worldwide for the rest of the guys on the sales floor.

I relied on the opinion of about three or four clients. The bond between us was really special. It was like we where close, we knew a hell of a lot about one another lives – and it was really genuine! Sometimes, I might talk to this select group three or maybe four times a week. It was a symbiotic relationship. I could pass new projects their way in advance of their competition, they could then give these new releases an airing to important ‘taste makers’ and key regional buyers. They would feedback to me how these new releases went down and occasionally we would have it so finely tuned that our team efforts would completely nail it. We would be able to pick a national top ten hit out of a batch of hundreds of new releases…this did not go unnoticed.

Record Label Advanced Sales Techniques

Soon I moved on to a record label. When I met my prospective director he asked me 'what are your unique qualities that help your client relationships?'...

Wow, handbrake, stop, halt. I'm not entirely sure... I knew I could talk through the all the latest info on my subject, but what exactly did I do on those calls, in those meetings that allowed me to catapult myself to interviewing as a label manager after only three years in the business?

So back to Impact factory...

We first ran this course as a completely tailored programme for one of our senior partner's clients. This client does meetings with big investments at stake. They have sales people that have highly developed technical know how, dynamic personalities and precise briefs – in short they are really good. And guess what?

Overwhelmingly they got better... better at handling things when the client doesn’t quite get it, better at following a gut feeling that something is unsaid, better at pulling the plug if it is going nowhere.

And they kept coming back, eventually making this programme part of their core curriculum, and thus our sales presentation course was born.

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