Fabulous show on BBC last night about the journey of Facebook leading up to their IPO.  For those in the UK, you can watch it here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017ywty   The two points I got from the show:   a)  The headline of this blog refers to a gamer who plays a Facebook app game called Pet [...]

What kind of a sales strategy gets your name printed in The Sunday Times Rich List? In PART 2 of this article, Matt takes a look at the lottery winner and the actor. What are the secrets to their success?

The Sunday Times Rich List 2012 has been published. Do you feature? If not, why not? Matt takes a look at the wide variety of business people, entertainers and sports stars included, and asks: what kind of selling strategy is getting them on that list?

Is this the worst job application note ever?

Does anyone have anything to sell Mark Zuckerberg? In the final Part 2 of this article, Matt talks about the creativity required to make a big sale!

Face to face training can be incredible. Virtual training can be great too. Here Matt explains the difference, with a little help from his friends.

Does anyone have anything to sell Mark Zuckerberg? In Part 1 of this article, Matt talks about the creativity required to make a big sale.

Caine’s Arcade is a funny, inspirational little movie doing the rounds on Facebook right now. I loved it. Caine is the world’s greatest emerging salesman. He embodies what we call the Big Three qualities: creativity, passion and courage. He needs creativity to come up with something appealing, passion and determination to sit there all day [...]

In last week’s PART 1, I talked about how a sales strategy might incorporate the power of “Free” – if used in the right way.  In today’s follow up PART 2 I look at the dangers of ‘free’, and determine how you might best utilise it for your customers.

‘Free’ is a word that’s banded around everywhere we go. The deals range from ‘buy one get one free’ at high street restaurants to ‘pay for 11 months and get 1 month free’ at the local gym, and there aren’t many industries missing out on the action. The reason it’s used so frequently? Well that’s [...]

The recent budget showed us that there are sales opportunities everywhere. The difference is what we call at Natural Training “domain expertise”. Matt explains how domain expertise can give you the edge.

Two of Matt’s favourite quotes to describe Value.

Chipotle’s Grammy Award Winning Advertisement highlights the power of imagery.

One Minute Pause (Natural Training’s Newsletter): Selling Value is more than a skill, it’s a necessity in today’s marketplace. If you can sell value, then you will avoid pricing objections and maintain a premium price for your product. Natural Training’s Founder Matt Drought gives you four ways to sell your value.

Assorted tips, hope they help – No stranger or unknown company will ever contact you by mail or by phone with an actual method for making money easily or in your spare time. And if the person or company contacting you asserts that they are someone you know, double check before taking action. – Don’t [...]

A sale is a communication challenge: How do we help them understand? Analogies are a great way of creating that understanding – and here’s a great example.

Picture in your mind for a moment a typical Accountant.  What is s/he doing? If you pictured an Accountant from Enron, he is probably making number plates.  But if you pictured a normal accountant, she would probably have a calculator, or a spreadsheet, or a graph out in front of them.  For they are the [...]

There are many skills involved in being a great presenter.  The most important of these, I believe, is one’s ability to make the complex, simple. Presenters use all sorts of techniques to do this, including analogies, getting rid of jargon (tech sector please take note!), examples, stories and striking visual representations of ideas. Here’s an [...]

How fast do you talk? Popular opinion says that most of us talk at 125 words a minute…

It can be dangerous to assume that closing stands by itself as a separate entity right at the end of the sale. A more effective way to regard closing is that if you conduct the sale in a certain way from the start, then you are much more likely to lead to a natural close. Here are 5 key elements to the Natural Closing Mindset: