Let's face it. Sales gurus and trainers are a dime a dozen these days.

There are more sales methodologies out there than any of us would want to study and test.

Why should you listen to us?

Hi, my name is Patrick Clouden and I founded this site.

I'm not a sales trainer by profession; I own one of the nation's top energy consulting firms, Consumer Energy Solutions, and in this company I employ almost 200 salespeople. I've had CES for 10 years now and, prior to that, I built up and sold a long distance carrier (Least Cost Routing, Inc.) to Primus Telecommunications. Least Cost Routing employed over 50 salespeople before I sold it.

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.

Before owning my own companies, I worked as a salesperson for non-profits, consulting companies and long distance carriers. All in all, I've been in sales for over 25 years, and I've been managing sales forces for almost 20 years.

As you can imagine, I've studied and tested more sales methodologies than most and have overseen the training of thousands of salespeople.

If you run a sales force, I'm sure you can relate to the following problems:

High turnover of middle and low performers.

The 80/20 "rule" (80% of the sales come from 20% of the people--something that I've found can be FIXED with the right training).

Having to then count on those select few for your numbers--if you lose one, it significantly impacts your business.

Being pigeonholed in your hiring process to having to look only for salespeople with experience in your industry.

Lack of a training program that allows you to take people with little or no experience in your industry (or even in sales, for that matter) and turn them into viable producers.

Feeling that you have to desperately hold on to even middle producers because finding another that will stick is a painful process.

These issues have long been accepted as "unavoidable part of the game," but they aren't. If you've suspected that there must be some way to escape these headaches, you are right.

I had the same suspicion for quite some time and I spent four years figuring it out in my own business. I had expert help and it was a brain-wracking process at times, but we came out the other end with a truly workable solution that has been fully proven in a real sales environment.

To be honest, the results were exponentially better than what I had expected.

We slashed turnover by almost 50%.

We turned bottom performers into top performers.

We went from having about 10 top-tier producers to almost 100, absolutely shattering the 80/20 production ratio.

We have cut our hiring ad budget to almost nothing due to increased retention and referrals.

And we did this with people hired out of the local newspaper.

No, not everyone made it through our training program, but that was an added benefit: it weeded out the people that were never going to make it on the job anyways.

I was in such awe of the results that I decided to start a business around these services--Accelerated Training Solutions--and give sales training the focus it deserves.

What to Do First

Whether you're a business owner or a salesperson, you should do our Free Sales Mini-Course.

It's a small sampling of our Master Closer Program and I think you'll find the information enlightening and immediately applicable to whatever you're selling.

Thanks for stopping by,

Sig

Patrick Clouden

CEO, Consumer Energy Solutions