The Shark Tank

 The Shark Tank

3 Lessons a Sales Person Can Learn from CNBC’s Shark Tank

(By Joshua Gould)

 

ALL BRAND MANAGERS AND TRAINING MANAGERS CAN LEARN FROM THIS.

 

Lesson 1

 

You have to be able to explain your product simply. I can’t tell you how many business owners stand up in front of the sharks and can’t explain their products.

It usually ends with the sharks having to ask lots of questions to just understand what the product is, by which time they have lost confidence in the business owner’s ability.

This happens in sales all the time, salespeople get asked simple questions and they don’t know the answer.

Their products may be exactly what the buyer needs but the buyer loses confidence or simply doesn’t get the product and moves on.

Buyers often don’t have time to ask questions, if they don’t understand your product they are likely to look for something else.

To avoid this ensure that you can easily explain what you are selling in less than 30 seconds. If you can immediately grab the buyer’s interest you’ll have a longer period of time to engage and sell the value.

Lesson 2

Buyers are emotional. I am always amazed when watching the show that clever people who have made billions in business throw their money at ideas simply because they have an emotional connection to the company, product, or story of the owner.

This behavior isn’t exclusive to billionaires, we all do it.

We want to identify with the services and products we procure, we often believe that what we buy helps to publicly define us.

To capitalize on this make sure sales presentations and materials are full of stories so that companies and buyers can identify with you and your product.

Lesson 3

You need to know your numbers.

You often see great businesses or inventions in a Shark Tank.

The ideas look interesting and the presentation demonstrates a clear value and then…….crash.

A Shark asks for the sales numbers, profit, and gross margin. The business owner throws out contradictory numbers and the sharks dig their teeth in until they have sucked the life out of their victim and embarrassed them on international TV.

Buyers do the same. I use to be a buyer for a big box store and if the salesperson couldn’t tell me how much things cost, how many items they can produce, how long they could hold the stock for I would simply move on no matter what the potential of the product was.

I just didn’t have the time or the confidence in the salesperson.

To avoid this you must learn your numbers and then role-play so it becomes normal for people to fire questions at you and then cross-check what you say.

Nothing can make you look more amateur in a sales environment than not knowing your basic numbers.

My wife is obsessed with Shark Tank, it’s not my favorite show, I would rather be watching Gold Rush on the Nat Geo channel which is on at the same time but I try and take away lessons from everything in life.