Even I Didn't Think I
Could Increase My Sales By Triple
Digits In A Hyper-Competitive Market...But I
Did.
What I learned
from eight months of studying and testing popular sales
systems in a real
sales environment.
Hi, my name is
Patrick Clouden and I never thought I'd be selling a sales
training program. I own one of the nation's top energy
consulting firms, Consumer
Energy Solutions,
where I employ almost 200 salespeople, and it took a near
meltdown of that company for me to arrive where I'm at
today.
Me in black, MCing our annual Christmas party and bonus giveaway.
Me accepting a Christmas present from my managers. My partner is on the left.
A shot of my some of my great people at CES.
How Almost Losing
My Company Led Me to Discover the Key To Unlocking Its
True Potential
Powerful
marketing and sales teams are what separates great businesses
from the mediocre. There's plenty of great sales theory
out there. The art and science of selling has, in my
opinion, been cracked long ago. There are scores of
incredible books on the subject written by great sales
geniuses.
The real
challenge is how do you take all that data, break it down into
digestible pieces and teach them in such a way that anyone can
learn, practice and master them?
Well, that's
something I've figured out and here's the
story...
In
2003, Consumer Energy Solutions was faced with
a crisis: the National Do Not Call
Registry.
For 7 years we
did nothing but enroll home owners in
free, state-regulated programs designed to help them
save on their energy bills. It was a great,
profitable machine.
And then the DNC
Registry was instituted. It grew by leaps and bounds
and in the blink of an eye, our prospect pool shrunk by as much
as 70% in certain markets.
Sales crashed
and we had to start tapping into reserves. Week
after week they were getting drained and to make matters worse,
we had just purchased a new building and the build-out
was $200,000 over budget. The
reserves finally ran out and we started sinking into
debt.
For the first time since I
started the company, the chances of closing our doors were
scarily real. After I got over cursing the government
and feeling bad for
myself, I decided to suck it up and fight back.
My Only Option
Was To Try Something I Had Never Done
Before
My only
choice was to transition the whole company over to commercial
sales. Up until that point, I had never put more
than 15 reps on a commercial program. Commercial
sales was tougher and I just never had to bother with;
residential sales was profitable and easy.
Now I had
to go find good commercial programs to sell and figure out
how to build a real commercial sales machine.
To put it
plainly, the transition was grim. Sales were at an all-time low
and ony a handful of my reps could really get
anywhere in the hyper-competitive commercial markets. A fair
amount were barely getting by and another chunk of my
salespeople were simply failing.
It was clear...I
needed to figure out how to rapidly teach people I was hiring
out of the local newspaper how to sell commercial energy
programs to business owners or my company was
done.
Discovering My
Company's Biggest
Camoflauged Hole
A camoflauged
hole is a deficiency or malfunction that exists in your
business but is hidden, and my company had a huge one.
Once it was clear
what we had to do, my partner and I decided to start
listening to calls to see where our reps were at. We
did and we were faced with a glaring problem: these
savvy business owners were NOT the housewives our reps were
used to. Many of them were shopping multiple supply
companies, were watching the markets closely and were basically
just running my reps over.
It become clear
that while they could do well in the soft world of residential
sales, most of my reps simply weren't good enough salespeople
to make it in the rough-and-tumble commercial
markets.
I remember that
moment because it gave me a glimmer of hope. If I could
make them better salespeople, my company may make it after
all.
Of course the
only way to do that is with effective training, so I requested
to see what our training department was using.
Well, it
was horrible. The "fly by the seat of your pants"
residential training was mutated into commercial training and
it was no wonder my guys were getting killed by
prospects.
I had a starting
point: get sales training that actually
works.
"How Hard Can It Be?"
"Okay," I remember thinking. "There are a million sales
training programs out there. How hard can it be to find
one that will work for my company?"
If you think that sounds naive, you're right. I was in
for a rude awakening.
I started researching online and selected some popular programs
that will remain nameless here. I ordered some books and
materials to review and, as I expected, the information was
generally very good.
After meeting with my partner and top reps, I decided upon the
first program I would implement and paid for the
materials. I was certain that my guys would do well with
it.
Everything
arrived, my trainers got up to speed, and we started it with
high hopes and expectations. I started with thirty
of my reps--some good, some bad--and was paying them to train
two hours per day.
I'll spare you
the day-by-day details, but the first training attempt was a
complete failure. I think maybe two people actually got
through the program, they rated the training a "5" on a scale
from 1-10 and their stats were still in the exact same ranges
as before.
It was a
discouraging setback, but I wasn't ready to give up.
Round 2:
Different Program, Worse Results?
I went back to the
drawing board and asked every successful businessperson I
knew what they used for sales training.
I got quite a few
recommendations and after re-reviewing the ones I passed on
before plus a few new ones, I ordered the next round of
training materials to review.
The materials
arrived, the reviews completed, and another program was
bought. The second round of training began and the
results were...worse?
After the
disappointment with the first program, my reps quit the second
even faster and the grumbling about wasting valuable phone time
was spreading.
I have to admit
that at this point, a little bit of despair crept in. I
was perplexed. The information was good. Sales
isn't rocket science; all the programs taught good solid
fundamentals. Why couldn't people just get it use
it?
And so I started
asking everyone who participated in the training what they
didn't like about it. I asked my trainers what they
thought was causing the problems.
Thought I didn't
realize it at the time, the feedback I got was the beginning of a real solution that played a crucial role in
saving my company.
After distilling
it all down, there seemed to be four major problems with the
training programs, and they had nothing to do with the
quality of the information.
The Four Reasons Why
Most Sales Training Programs
Fail
1. The materials are overwhelmingly
large.
Though disappointing, it was true. My reps were seeing
300-page books and manuals and immediately wanting to
leave. The idea of reading a 300-page book is daunting
for most people.
This was made even more troublesome by the next
problem.
2. The training is way too theory-heavy with
little-to-no practical and
drilling.
These large books and manuals had great information, but simply
reading something doesn't really imprint it in your mind and
allow you to incorporate it into your sales. The training
programs I tested were probably 80% theory and 20% practical
(hands-on practicing).
When I started asking around, I found that most of my reps
couldn't remember much of what they had studied and had
implemented very little of it.
3. The practicals and drills that are provided are very
shallow and insufficient.
What little hands-on practice there was just didn't cut
it. Giving someone a complex but useful model of
questioning to use when selling and then telling him to
"practice it until he has it down" is almost
insulting.
4. The materials aren't customized to what is being
sold so salespeople can't figure out how to apply it in their
sales.
This was one of the real killers. There were all kinds of
great techniques with examples, but the examples were about
selling cars, insurance, shoes, etc. My reps sold energy
programs and many couldn't make the connection of how the
information could be applied to their
sales.
"Okay. That's Why They Fail. What
Do I Do Now?"
After looking at the other sales training programs I
was considering with those four points in mind, I realized
that they all had major deficiencies in these
areas. They were all destined to fail just like the
previous two.
There was one sure way out of this
mess: I had to
build my own sales training
program.
I've spent 25 years in sales and almost 20 managing sales
forces. I've read every classic sales book out there and
have participated in who knows how many training programs
myself. I had the knowledge and experience to build a
program, so why not?
I got my son, a gifted writer, involved and went over
with him what we were going to do.
I wanted a program that began with a course on the true
fundamentals of sales and I wanted it relatively small (no more
than 100 pages of reading), heavily weighted toward thorough,
well-thought-out practicals and drills and I wanted it
customized for selling energy.
My son, top sales reps and managers and I got to work and
over the next eight months, we studied and tested all
kinds of sales techniques and methodologies with my live sales
force. We got immediate feedback on what worked and what
didn't and slowly but surely started incorporating the
successful elements.
After eight months of carefully evaluated research,
meticulous testing, filtering out what worked and what
didn't...85 pages of key, basic theory on sales
emerged.
This would address the first point of failure: too much to
study. This length would give my people an effective
sales education without overwhelming
them.
We then addressed the other three points of failure: we
built a comprehensive suite of drills, practicals and
hands-on exercises to ensure that the salesperson has a high
enough level of understanding to immediately implement what he
has learned and we customized everything to fit energy
sales.
Our program was finally ready to launch with its first wave of
trainees.
The results were literally night and day different. My
people loved the course length, the information
itself, the customized examples and the drills that really
taught them how to use the information. So
much so that many were saying it
was...
...The Best Sales Training They Had Ever Done. But That's Only
The Beginning.
The feedback I
was receiving was staggeringly good .
Seasoned salespeople were raving about the training. Team
numbers were jumping up by factors of 200 and 300%.
I knew I
was really onto something.
I wanted to see
the big picture though, so I had my marketing department do two
separate case studies of graduates of my new training
program.
Here are the
highlights of the studies:
Consumer Energy Solutions Case Study #1
- 25 participants ranging from the best to worst salespeople in the sales force. They were selling various programs in various markets (no one market change could account for the results).
- We looked at four week's worth of sales before and after the training for each of the participants.
- Before the training, the group produced 1,106 deals in 4 weeks.
- 24 out of 25 participants produced higher 4-week numbers after the training (96% success rate).
- After the training, the same group produced 1,986 deals in 4 weeks (180% increase in overall sales).
- The average individual increase in 4-week sales after the training was 177%.
Below is a bar graph of Group 1's statistics before and after the training program. The blue bars indicate before-training numbers and the green bars indicate after-training numbers.
Consumer Energy Solutions Case Study #2
- A different group of 25 participants, again ranging from the best to worst salespeople in the sales force. They were also selling various programs in various markets (no one market change could account for the results).
- We looked at four week's worth of sales before and after the training for each of the participants.
- Before the training, the group produced 775 deals in 4 weeks.
- 25 out of 25 participants produced higher 4-week numbers after the training (100% success rate).
- After the training, the same group produced 1737 deals in 4 weeks (224% increase in overall sales).
- The average individual increase in 4-week sales after the training was 226%.
Below is a bar graph of Group 2's statistics before and after the training program. The blue bars indicate before-training numbers and the green bars indicate after-training numbers.
Here are a couple success stories from various participants in the studies:
The
majority of my sales force rapidly got on and through the
training and as you saw, our numbers increased
exponentially. My company is now doing
better than ever; sales are out
the roof even in these tough economic
times.
Now, I don't want
to give unrealistic expectations or say that this training
course was the only factor in my company's rebound,
but the increases in sales speak for themselves and made the
residential-to-commercial transition a screaming
success.
An Unexpected
Opportunity And Test
Things were
seriously turning around in Consumer Energy Solutions and a
friend of mine approached me with a timely problem.
He owns a company
that consults and trains physical therapists and his clients
first learned how to get more new patients, but never learned
how to properly sell them on getting
services.
Many physical
therapists, by the way, have a particularly negative view
of sales--most feel they don't sell their services,
because sales means cheap polyester suits and
high-pressure tricks and gimmicks. Most physical
therapists feel they only educate patients who
then decide to pay thousands of dollars for treatments...which
is why many have such trouble with getting prospective patients
to handle their conditions!
I had an
interesting idea: why don't we customize my sales training
program for physical therapists selling to their prospective
patients and name it something totally disrelated to
sales?
My friend jumped
on the idea and the program was customized and ready within a
month. It was named the "Patient Compliance Course" and
it became...
...One of Their
Fastest-Selling Training Programs Of All
Time!
Their
clients ate it
up. They
sold over $100,000 of that program alone in less
than a month. Practice owners were
buying 10-20 at a time to deliver to all of their
therapists.
Different Industries, Same Results!
And
I've already customized this
training for two other industries: dentistry
and hotel management and here are some successes
from our recent delivery in a national hotel management company:
This
proved that the program really was teaching sales basics
that applied to selling
anything.
"Okay...I'm Interested. But
What's Actually Taught In This
Program?"
I'm glad you asked. First, let me clarify that we
are offering a "general sales" version of this program that
will help YOU work out exactly how to apply the information to
your sales. It isn't just for people who sell energy,
physical therapy, dentistry or hotel
management. If you're
in sales, this program will fit your
needs.
In this training program, you'll
learn...
The best part is you won't be getting hit with endless theory,
left spinning and wondering how you're going to apply any of
it.
And trust me, that's where 99% of the sales training programs
out there will leave you. You'll get flooded with theory
and when it's time to make a sales call, you'll have no idea
how to implement most of it. It's very
inefficient.
My program's
heavy emphasis on hands-on application of everything
learned won't be found anywhere
else. And I've looked far and wide.
It will lead you by the hand and walk you through not
only the theory but exactly how you're going to apply it
in your sales, and then it will have you PRACTICE it
until you're perfect.
In Three Days This
Program Will Teach You Things About Sales That You Might
Never Learn
Without It
Do you
have the time or facilities to study and test many
different sales methodologies and techniques with a large
sales force? Probably not.
That's
what makes this program unique. I'm not trying
to convince you that MY special way of selling is
the best. We simply rounded
up a bunch of classic, proven sales
literature and systems out there, tested them
and kept the best parts of
each. We then
built a real training system around the information so
you can quickly learn it and put it to
use.
In three
days, this program can take you from
knowing nothing about sales to being an effective
closer.
You'll Get a
High-Quality Workbook Complete With a Study Guide to
Ensure You Fully Understand
Everything
All the heavy
lifting has already been done for you. We carefully
selected and simplified everything you will read
and devised essays, practicals and drills that will make
it easy to learn.
All you have to
do is follow the Study Guide: read the material, do the essays
and drill until you've got it. Everything is laid out for
you.
30-Day, 100% Money-Back
Guarantee
I'm so confident
that my program will increase your sales that if within 30 days
of ordering it, you do it and don't feel that you've gotten
your money's worth, you can send it back for a full refund, no
questions asked.
You literally
have nothing to lose by ordering this program.
The Best
Investment You Can Make in These Tough Times
Is In
Yourself
There's nothing
we can do about where Wall Street and real estate are headed,
but we can do something about where we're
headed. It's
going to be up to us to make it through this recession and
that means we all have to get better.
Invest in
yourself, increase your sales skills and make more
money!
****************************************************
Level 1: The Fundamentals
of Sales
$247
Click Here To Buy
Now!
****************************************************
My Marketing Experts Tell Me That No Matter How Attractive The Offer Is, Only About 10-15% Will Buy
And that's okay with me from a business standpoint, but it still bothers me personally. You see, I know how much everyone in sales can benefit from this course. Not only do I deal with my own salespeople every day, I have people approach me for help in sales every day, either asking, "How can I get better at sales?" or "How can I make my salespeople better?"
I hate idea of someone not achieving this due to some error in my explanation of my product. So I brainstormed with my marketing guys as to why people might say "no" and here's what we came up with:
1. "$247 is a lot of money!"
I agree. $247 isn't cheap, but are you looking at this as an expense or an investment? It should be viewed as an investment because you're intending to take the skills you'd gain and make more money with them.
Industry professionals are gladly paying $3,000 to have customized versions of this program delivered to them (they come to us) and companies pay $3,000 to have it customized for their use and then $100 per workbook.
So is $247 too big of an investment to make in yourself?
Of course not. Now, I'm not naive; the real question is is this investment going to be worth it? Well, for that I have two things to say:
- What is your average commission per sale? How many additional sales would you have to make to pay for this program? Probably not very many.
If you get a $100 commission per sale and due to knowledge or skills acquired thanks to the program you close a mere 3 deals that you wouldn't have otherwise gotten, you've profited from the program.
- If, by the end of the first 30 days, it doesn't work out and you feel that you haven't gotten your money's worth, simply send it back to us for a 100% refund. There's really no risk.
2. "What makes this different from all the other programs out there?"
There is plenty of good sales theory out there. Between the hundreds of books and gurus out there, enough has been figured out to make you a great salesperson.
The problem is first locating the right material and then the problem becomes how it's presented and taught.
My program doesn't reinvent any wheels; we sorted through thousands of pages of sales training material and isolated real fundamentals that are easy to understand and immediately applicable to any kind of sales. You won't learn every great sales concept out there, but you'll learn enough key fundamentals to get real results, and we feel that's more important.
The level of detail that we gave to practical, hands-on drilling and application is second-to-none. I know how tough it is to learn and incorporate new things into old, habitual routines and we make the process easy. You will walk away from this program not only with an increased understaning of sales, you'll be successfully using what you've learned...not just thinking about it.
****************************************************
Go for
it,
Patrick
Clouden
CEO, Consumer
Energy Solutions
P.S. Sales is only
difficult when you aren't properly trained in it. There is an
easy solution, however. Learn how to sell the
right way and you will be successful at it. You
will be truly helping people and chances are, you
will ENJOY it.
P.P.S. If you're still not sure that this program is right for you, why don't you check out our free Sales Mini-Course first and get a taste of it?
| 
