Gary Agnew is construction director for Finning UK and Ireland,a leading provider of Caterpillar truck equipment. He answered our 20 questions and tells us how he went from selling clothes to selling trucks.
1. What was the first thing you sold?
Clothing on a market stall. As a youngster I’d help my aunt selling clothes on Aylesbury market.
2. Did you intend to go into sales when you started your career?
No, I was going to be a marketer, but six months after joining one of the businesses that eventually became part of Finning, I realised sales jobs was where the action was. You could say that Finning brought out the natural salesman in me.
3. What’s the single most important quality you need to succeed as a salesperson?
Tenacity – simple dogged determination. If you can’t find a solution to a sales problem you haven’t looked hard enough, and you certainly haven’t listened to the customer closely enough. Too many salespeople give up too easily too soon – the ones that succeed are the ones who refuse to believe that a slammed door means ‘no’.
4. What is the one thing you would love to sell?
Honestly? A Cat 797 – it’s the largest truck Caterpillar makes, which can carry up to 450 tonnes. It’s one of those vehicles you see in pictures of quarries where a 4x4 parked next to it doesn’t even come to the top of the truck’s wheel. It’s the biggest boy’s toy you could imagine.
5. What is the last thing you’d want to sell?
The lowest cost option. I enjoy selling a premier, where there’s between a 20% and 40% price difference from my rivals. I want to feel I’m selling quality products and services, I’ve no interest when price is the deciding differentiator.
6. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The best time to do a deal is when you’ve just done a deal. When you’ve just shaken hands and want to celebrate, stop and make that next call instead. It’s served me really well: when you’ve just made a deal you’re more relaxed, more creative and bit more self assured, and it’s amazing how many times you’ll succeed in that frame of mind.
7. What advice would you give to someone following in your footsteps?
Focus on doing a good job in your job– do that well and the next step in your career will look after itself. Now I’m a bit older I see so many people so obviously trying to climb the career ladder rather than getting on with the job in hand.
8. What did you buy with your first bonus?
A very large television and a very big night out. The television I remember, the night less so.
9. Who do you most admire in your industry?
Not one individual, but I admire self-made people, those who have built a business from nothing and make them a national or even international organisation.
10. How would you sell ice to an Eskimo?
I’d take him to the desert and sell it to him there. Sales is about identifying and creating a need.
11. How important is image for a salesperson?
It’s an old adage that people make their mind up about another person in the first five seconds, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
However it’s not about dressing sharp but dressing appropriately and making the customer feel at ease and demonstrating you understand his environment. If you’re turning up to a boardroom then a sharp suit is appropriate, but turning up like that on a building site is a good way of scaring a potential client: it’d be more appropriate to turn up in a polo shirt, hard hat and safety boots.
12. What is the single most important skill you need to close a sale?
Non verbal communication –reading people by what they do, not on what they say. It’s an art every salesman must master – the ability to see whether a client is really interested in what they’re hearing. When you’re told that you’re too expensive but you see that the body language says otherwise is when you’ve become a good salesperson.
Just selling a product is a very old fashioned way of working – in fact that’s not a sale, that’s a transaction. The real art is in differentiating the values of your product and developing loyalty through service levels.
13. Has anything ever gone wrong, that in hindsight, has worked out well for you?
In my first five weeks into my first proper sales job I sold nothing. I was starting to get quite down about it. One of the more experienced guys said to me: “For God’s sake take a chill-pill! Relax. Customers can see you’re uptight.” Of course he was right: customers could tell I was desperate, and it was only when I relaxed that sales started to come in.
14. What’s been your biggest success?
Getting this job. I joined this business 15 years ago, and from early on I aspired to this role. There’s often a sneering attitude to being with a business for many years, but there is something to be said for staying and developing with the same company. I still know clients I worked with in the first two or three years of being here, and relationships have developed to the point where I’m not selling to them but they phone me, asking for help and advice.
15. If you were to pack up your desk and leave today, what would you like to be known for?
Being a great people person – developing people, promoting people and helping them.
One of the problems I have with a sales background going into senior management is that I still enjoy the ‘thrill of the kill’, so it can be hard to back off to allow the salesperson the space to do their job. I have to check myself sometimes as a reminder that my role now is much more about empowering the team, giving them support and coaching, but ultimately letting them get on with doing the deal. You end up getting great satisfaction from seeing others succeed.
16. How has sales changed from when you started out?
At a corporate level there’s increasing centralisation of procurement, which means decisions are taken more on a spreadsheet basis with a long selection process. It makes sales far less personal and often means you can’t promote the particular attributes of a product and services, those things which give it its real value.
The worst procurement is when people see things on a purely short term cash and cost saving basis, they don’t realise the continuing benefits that a good piece of kit will bring them through its total ownership period. Having said that, there are some outstanding procurement departments that look to build long-term strategic relationships with suppliers
17. What are the current challenges facing your industry?
On a macro level the environmental debate is really affecting how we sell within the industry, similarly with safety: the UK is a world leader in safety legislation and developments, and these will continue to rise up the agenda.
Changes in technology are also having major changes in the way we sell Caterpillar products. GPS tracking and machine health systems are improving fuel consumption and operating efficiencies – this technology not only spots potential problems but tracks the data through satellite technology. Often the first thing a customer knows about a problem in one of their machines is when we call them and tell them.
However the biggest issue we face is attracting young people into the industry. The construction industry as a whole is not seen as an attractive proposition to young people, who would prefer to work in IT or other cleaner environments. We need to draw in more young talent into this sector and help graduates realise this is a great industry and that sales is a great career choice.
18. How has the digital age changed sales?
Massively, not just with online selling but CRM systems and all round communications. When I started I used a paper customer database and a Filofax, with a big heavy weight mobile phone. Now everything is instantaneous, with laptops and BlackBerrys all just the basic tools of trade for every salesperson. We seem to be working harder and more quickly, but whether we’re actually achieving more and selling better is another issue.
19. What will never change?
People buy from people. There are so many customers trying to rationalise the sales process, but it’s still the human element, the personal trust, which is at the heart of good sales. The thing that elevates sales above a simple transaction is that you have a relationship that helps you understand what the client’s real needs are and helps them achieve their goals. That’s when you’ve done your job well.
20. Who is the best salesman ever, real or fictional?
The first is Jim Wilson, who’s been working from our Glasgow branch for something like 25 years. He’s known as ‘Bacardi Jim’; he spends a lot of time socialising with clients and he works really hard, is good fun and is personable. He knows his customers so well, and he never gives in. He’s been our top performer year after year!
The other person is Dave Blackburn: he’s not a salesman as such but he’s one of the best sales assets we have. Dave is a field service engineer and if there’s a problem with a machine and no one else can fix it we call Dave…he seems to have this sixth sense with machines. He’s a situation changer – one of those people who show clients just how good we can be when it comes to service.
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