Phil Jones, sales & marketing director of Brother UK, tells Salestarget about his journey from door-to-door insurance salesman to the board of a communications giant, and what he has learnt about resilience, reward and road cycling...
1. What was the first thing you sold?
Door to door life insurance. We’d be dropped off on housing estates at night and be expected to knock on doors, and apply pressure selling techniques. I lasted ten weeks - it was horrible.
2. Did you intend to go into sales when you started your career?
No, it was by accident. I’d been working in a huge pub in Essex, like a Wild West saloon: we had shootings, fights, drugs, robberies. After three years, I realised running a pub takes over your life. I was walking down the Tottenham Court Road and walked into a recruitment consultancy looking for any job.
3. What’s the single most important quality you need to succeed as a salesman?
Resilience. To succeed long-term you need depth of character, the ability to take the “no’s” but still see the opportunity and have the drive to carry on.
A good salesperson has to learn not to take rejection personally. If you’re going to succeed you have to look long-term, not get angry with rejection, but keep that steely determination and succeed by drilling the numbers, identifying lessons and learning from them.
4. What is the one thing you would love to sell?
I’d love to be the MD of a big cycling brand.
5. And the last thing?
There’s so much emotion invested in the sale of a car: you might have a product with great specifications but if someone doesn’t like it that’s it. Selling a car is too emotive.
6. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
By really knowing what drives you, good and bad, it can really help you to walk in the shoes of others. It allows you to build far more meaningful long-term relationships, leading to increased sales. Read a few books, take a psychometric test and ask for feedback from others about your performance.
7. What advice would you give to someone following in your footsteps?
Develop consistency in your contacts. In my years with Brother, I’ve seen customers work at three different companies in three different roles, but we’ve stayed in contact. There’s more professional mobility than ever, but the rise of social media means it’s never been easier to keep in contact, and follow people through their careers.
8. What did you buy with your first bonus?
A suit and two shirts from a tailor in Jermyn Street – I walked out feeling like a king.
9. Who do you most admire in your industry?
Ron Sargent, the chairman and chief executive of Staples. He’s the linchpin of that business, driving an old car and spending weekends visiting stores, seeing how they work and what can be improved.
10. How would you sell ice to an Eskimo?
I’d sell it as a solution for warmth: snow can be turned into ice bricks, which can be turned into an igloo, which can keep you warm. It’s about seeing beyond the product and identifying what the customer needs. So at Brother we don’t sell printers, we sell forms of communication: similarly you don’t sell snow to an Eskimo, you sell them a means of staying warm.
11. How important is image for a salesperson?
Really important. People look you up and down, and make instant decisions on what they see. I make sure I’m always dressed in quality shoes, a double cuff shirt and a quality tie.
12. What is the single most important skill you need to close a sale?
There are three issues – the first is that the best salesmen go out with the intention of closing, with a clear idea of what they need from any interaction. The second is they understand the brand, the products and the brief before they step outside. The third is they understand the client's needs beforehand, and you can’t do that until you’ve properly uncovered their need.
13. Has anything ever gone wrong, that in hindsight, has worked out well for you?
Lots of times. I remember one particularly difficult client who had a buyer wedded to a competitor – no matter what we said or showed him there was always some objection to him switching the account. By chance I met his reporting director at a business function, and instead of pitching – which would have been inappropriate at that event – I asked him to describe his business vision. When he finished I said “We can help you to achieve those goals, in fact we’ve a firm proposal on the table right now”. A little later we won the account.
14. What’s been your biggest success?
To be made a board director at Brother UK at the tender age of 36: it’s a Japanese-owned company, and they don’t tend to promote people to the board until they’re in their 40s. However that’s been matched by recently being named Institute of Directors North West Director of the Year.
15. If you were to pack up your desk and leave today, what would you like to be known for?
Keeping the sales team at Brother UK fresh and innovative for so long.
16. How has sales changed from when you started out?
The biggest change has been speed. When I started, a typical day’s routine was going though the front door of a company, speaking to a receptionist to get a name and as much information as possible, and spending the afternoon trying to arrange meetings with a buyer. Now business is turbo-charged, time-poor and you have to work much more smartly to win attention.
17. What are the current challenges facing your industry?
The growing uncertainty of where demand will come from.
18. How has the digital age changed sales?
Digital has changed the sales process hugely: it’s given a lot of power to the buyer, who now has access to so much information and transparency. It's meant salespeople are increasingly less involved in the transactional part of the process, but involved more in brand building and developing opportunities, finding clients’ real needs and generating opportunities.
19. What will never change?
A salesperson is a salesperson: the old school basics of understanding need, understanding people, understanding product, understanding brief, the ability to close, are unchanged. What’s needed now is a greater degree of sophistication in applying them.
20. Who is the best salesman ever, real or fictional?
A man called Geoff Ross, who even prior to retirement was superb. He really worked an account – he not only knew everyone involved but knew what their issues and problems were. He was able to second guess what their needs were, pre-empt them and still have plan B ready in case an unexpected issue came up. He was bombproof within his accounts and clients never looked anywhere else.
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