Selling is a talent that few people naturally possess but one that is nonetheless essential to any company that wants to succeed in business. Because selling is so difficult, many of those who are good at it have amassed a small fortune over the years writing books and organising courses that will teach others how to get out there and close deals.
Pat Weymes of WinWin Selling is one such guru. A native of Bray, Co. Wicklow, Weymes is a recognised authority on selling and has over 18 years experience training people in the areas of attitude and motivation in sales training.
As well as being a successful trainer, Weymes is also the author of seven books on selling, sales training, and sales management, and has had his work translated into over twenty languages including Chinese and Hebrew.
With all his experience, Weymes is used to dealing with people on a face-to-face basis. However, around five years ago, he came to the conclusion that the skills he was teaching to individuals and groups through his books and courses could also be delivered through the Web. However, despite the fact that e-learning was considered to be a potentially lucrative market, few people believed that sales training via the Net was something that could work and Weymes found himself facing a number of obstacles when he attempted to establish an online presence.
‘Most people didn’t think it was a smart idea to set up a site dedicated to sales training and many thought that we couldn’t translate selling through the Internet,’ says Weymes. ‘We went to a number of banks for funding and they thought we were mad. We also spoke to a number of potential investors, but these all walked away.’
Nonetheless, Weymes was convinced that his idea could be a success. He explains, ‘I had this vision and I couldn’t see why it wouldn’t work, even though everyone was telling me it was doomed to failure. I felt that it should be possible to migrate from the floor to the Internet because the Net seemed like the perfect medium to me. The problem was though that most people believed that motivating sales people was something that had to be done offline’. Weymes continues, ‘one reason why I thought the Net would work for us is that my books had already been translated into a lot of different languages and therefore I knew that the actual content was sound, I also felt that the simplicity of the information we were offering would work well via a medium that is famous for being easy-to-use’.
Against all odds
Despite the fact that few people thought that online sales training could work, Weymes launched WinWin Selling in 1998 (www.winwinselling.com). Almost immediately, he found that there was a high level of interest in the website from companies interested in sales and management training via the Internet. IBM was one such organisation who could see the advantages of it, particularly as WinWin Selling was able to offer IBM a packaged course that reflected the company’s particular selling methods and ethos. ‘We talked to IBM just after we launched the site and at that time they were in the market for an e-learning programme for their employees,’ Weymes explains. ‘They could immediately see the potential of our particular programme because they have a large number of sales staff that are scattered around the globe and it obviously isn’t efficient for them to get their employees together in a particular venue for a training day. The company was impressed by the fact that our course could be offered to new staff as soon as they joined the organization, was highly interactive, and had a unique sales message as well.’
The secret of WinWin Selling’s success is that not only does it cover all the skills salespeople need to research, prepare and deliver sales targets, but that users also have access to a highly skilled trainer throughout the course via an Instant messaging application. Added to this is the benefit of students being able to undertake the programme in their own time and at their own pace. More importantly, WinWin Selling offers a radical new approach to selling; one which rejects the traditional ‘hard sell’ in favour of non-manipulative selling. The benefits to businesses are obvious because the course allows employers to see when staff are logging on to study. In fact, Weymes believes that this makes the firm’s e-learning programme even more efficient that classroom training.
Since the Website was first launched, WinWin Selling has retained IBM as a customer and has also gained a number of other high-profile corporate clients. The company has expanded its product range over the past few years and is now offering around 60 different courses on everything from basic sales training to presentation and negotiation skills. The company was recently awarded the SME e-business award at the ICT Expo Awards for its use of the Net to sell training courses over the web and instant worldwide messaging and currently, the company is dealing with students in 62 different countries.
Vision
Weymes believes that the company has done well online because it specifically doesn’t try to drown the user in content. He says, ‘I took around 18 months out of my life writing and arranging the course material for the website and I knew that keeping it simple was the best way to get information across to users. All I wanted on the website was a page of information that was motivating enough to make users want to continue scrolling down the page. Because of this I kept cutting down the content until it was down to the essentials. The guideline was that if it took longer than 25 seconds to read the particular message that I was trying to convey to the reader, then it was already too late. You have to keep your messages brief and to the point in order to win over readers online. That way you’re almost creating an international language that’s easy to understand’. He continues, ‘almost any company can succeed online providing they too keep things simple and I believe that there’s no limits to what you can do in business if you have the vision’.
10/07/2003
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