Neil Pickersgill, field sales director at ThomsonLocal.com talks to SalesTarget about change, challenges and Charles Darwin.
1. What was the first thing you sold?
Granite and marble. I’d answered a job ad in a paper and ended up working for a company selling building materials to architects. After six months in a sales job as the office boy I thought I knew it all and went to my manager and said: “I know how all this works. I’d like a company car and go out on the road”. He replied with: “Put on your best suit and tie tomorrow - you’re going out.” Within six months I was their best salesman and was running my own team.
2. Did you intend to go into sales when you started your career?
No. When I left school I wanted to be a footballer or a drummer – I even had trials for Leeds United. But I found I enjoyed selling and working with people.
3. What’s the single most important quality you need to succeed as a salesperson?
The ability to listen. Too many people associate salespeople with door to door hard sell and forcing through a deal. People who bulldoze their way through a sales team can be quite disruptive and upset the balance of an organisation.
The most important quality is to listen to the customer and find out what they really want, and then put over a solution in an articulate, succinct way. You’ve also got to add passion, reliability and integrity.
4. What is the one thing you would love to sell?
Leeds United to someone who could really invest in the club and take it back to where it should rightfully be.
5. What is the last thing you’d want to sell?
My soul. You’ve got to believe what you sell – if you cut me I’ll bleed ThomsonLocal.com blue. But most importantly I’ll stand by core values and principles.
6. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
It’s a quote from Charles Darwin: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” I worked for T-Mobile for nine years, and it was a company in constant change – we had four CEOs in my time. Fortunately I enjoy and embrace change. You have to adapt to survive, both corporately and personally.
7. What advice would you give to someone following in your footsteps?
Keep the customer at the heart of all your decision making. If you do something because it’s right for the customer in the long run you’ll be successful.
8. What did you buy with your first bonus?
I took a holiday: I needed it.
9. Who do you most admire in your industry?
Three people spring to mind: Douglas Colquhoun, Russell Taylor at Everything Everywhere and Elio Schiavo the chief executive of Thomson Local. The main reason I’m here is because he convinced me of his passion for the business, his vision and his want to embrace change.
10. How would you sell ice to an Eskimo?
I wouldn’t. They have enough around them and so it’d be something that a customer didn’t really want or need. Sales is about listening to what they want rather than what you want to give them.
11. How important is image for a salesperson?
First impressions are critical. The salesperson is the first and the last impression that a customer has of a business, and it has to be right – vehicle, clothes, hair.
But it’s the whole image - how they look after their car, how tidy their desk is. If they don’t show any respect for their own appearance then how can a customer believe they will respect their clients or their employer?
12. What is the single most important skill you need to close a sale?
Belief: in yourself, the product, the brand. If you believe you will succeed. I remember watching Linford Christie when he won gold - you could see that belief in his eyes – pure concentration on his goal, blocking out everything else to focus on winning.
13. Has anything ever gone wrong, that in hindsight, has worked out well for you?
Yes, my first job. I went to the interview, thought I’d done well, and then heard nothing. About three weeks later I called them to ask what had happened and they said “we expected to see you last week”. They’d sent the letter but I’d never received it.
14. What’s been your biggest success?
It was at T-Mobile. I led the retail sales team and over 18 months turned it around to put in its best ever performance. When I joined it wasn’t performing well – you could see it in the way people moved, the way they spoke, the high attrition rate. It took months but we turned it around. Success bred success, and month after month we kept beating our own records.
15. If you were to pack up your desk and leave today, what would you like to be known for?
Opening up people's minds to the possibilities created by change.
16. How has sales changed from when you started out?
It’s becoming more of a science than an art. People are starting to wake up to the fact that sales is a long game rather than something for fly by night bamboozle merchants.
I spend a lot of time recruiting salespeople, trying to find those who are here for the long haul and who will look at building clients.
17. What are the current challenges facing your industry?
ThomsonLocal.com needs to change and embrace new forms of digital media. The printed directories have been an incredibly successful product but it’s no secret that year on year we will see revenues from them drop as more people search via digital.
It’s not enough to accept changes – we need to drive them by innovation. It’s also clear that we need to position ourselves clearly in this new landscape.
18. How has the digital age changed sales?
It’s had a huge impact. Sales not only needs to embrace digital media, but social media. It also needs to look at how we and our customers can use emerging technologies, for example we’ve had a top 10 new app on iPhone.
19. What will never change?
Despite all the changes in technology sales is about people working with people. Technology is there to help you achieve that, not act as a barrier.
20. Who is the best salesperson ever, real or fictional?
Lord Sugar. He built a business in his garage, made it huge, sold it and moved on into other areas. He’s managed to remain a salesman at heart while reinventing himself as a businessman, television celebrity – and getting a peerage into the bargain. His great trick is simplicity – keep the sales strategy simple and direct: when he gives an instruction it’s clear, unambiguous and then he lets them get on with it.
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