There was a time when life was simpler. When the marketing team were about customer avatars, crafting key messages, getting in front of the right audience with advertising and PR and creating promotions to drive customer trial and sales. What was left for sales to do was the relatively simple task of converting! Of course, … Continue reading Where does marketing end and sales begin?
Author: Grainne at All About Results
Grainne is a sales and training professional, a published author, NLP Practitioner and accredited Facilitator. She works with multinational businesses, not for profit organisations and small business owners to build on-brand sales skills and confidence.
Grainne originally trained in accountancy but was lured by the shiny light of sales. She honed her skills and experience at Mars selling and negotiating in the major grocery accounts. Initially feeling like an imposter in the extrovert world of sales she came to realise - you don’t have to sell your soul to be a successful salesperson and, in fact, being authentic gets better results. She is on a mission to change the sleazy perception of sales and create a nation of confident, sales savvy business owners.
In 2005 she set up her training business and developed a sales training framework, based around NLP, which shapes the programmes she designs. She has had fantastic opportunities along the way training teams in Australia, Singapore, Denmark, Holland as well as in the UK.
Grainne lives in Berkshire with her 2 teenage daughters. She is a social tennis and badminton player – which means she runs in the opposite direction from serious competition - and a keen walker. Every couple of years she undertakes a BIG walk to raise funds for a local charity.
Author of 3 books: Handling difficult customers; Training skills; Time management.
We all know that presenting rates as one of the greatest fears in life! For many business people any element of selling rates just as highly. If you are someone who feels that way, it is understandable that, when the dreaded moment of stepping into sales mode approaches, your anxiety levels begin to rise, you … Continue reading Don’t let selling become your horror story!
Prospects can be frustrating. We have all had the experience of thinking that the business is in the bag and then what comes next is radio silence. They appeared keen to meet and find out more about our products and services. We burned the midnight oil to prepare a proposal and then – nothing. So … Continue reading How not to follow up in sales!
A traditional view in sales and marketing is that we have to choose between a high volume, low quality lead generation formula and a high quality, low volume alternative. But is it not possible to have a third option – both high quality and high volume? We think there are ways of getting closer to … Continue reading Volume or quality in sales – or both?
‘I’m not selling you anything.’ ‘I just want to ask you a few questions.’ ‘It will only take a few minutes.’ It is not unusual for any of these to be the introduction to a telesales call. They can be perfectly polite but they are still not a good start to a sale. However, for … Continue reading Earning the right to be heard in sales
In the early days of Lockdown, in many conversations with friends who are small business owners, the prevailing mood was that now was not the time to be selling. It was the time to be helping wherever we could – and it had to be ‘for free’. I was sort of there with that thinking … Continue reading When good selling became ‘a thing’
You can’t help but hear the antagonistic tone of so much communication these days. I know I am not party to every conversation that is happening but through social and traditional media I am witnessing an unwholesome pattern of communication where, when someone airs a view which we disagree with, the almost normal response is … Continue reading Why we need to change our responses
I’m in the process of writing a book on Sales for the Non-Salesy Business Owner. (The working title – not the finished product!) I’d wrestled with whether it was the right thing to do – as why would I, as a Business Coach, recommend that people force themselves to master skills that don’t play to … Continue reading Tackle your sales Nemesis
I'm not big on my work anniversaries or making much noise about milestone events – even though I recommend that clients do! I’ll tell them it gets you noticed. It’s free PR. It rekindles past conversations and sparks new ones. This week LinkedIn has reminded me that I’ve been in business for 14 years. I … Continue reading Time to celebrate?
There is a lot being said about the doom and gloom of January. People are lamenting the gaping emptiness without Christmas celebrations, the pressure to give up alcohol or indeed anything else you enjoy and the sheer darkness of the mornings. But I’m a big fan of January! I love how uncluttered it is. Family … Continue reading January is a great month!