TGL Group educates on sales tactics

TGL Group regional sales manager Paul Bryan has said the organisation’s School of Sales and Sales Management aims is to provide CEOs, and sales professionals with the tools, insights and skills to accelerate their success in sales.

The group held its second Sales Force Development and Infrastructure Workshop in collaboration with the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce at the chamber’s head office in Westmoorings on November 13.

Bryan said companies were offered the chance to send their salespeople to the workshop. There were over 40 participants from industries including food and beverage, shipping, oil and gas engineering.

“There are companies and professionals who may not be able to afford to take us inside their company and do a customised in-house programme, but what they can do is send their sales reps to one-day trainings like these.

"Our intention here is to lay out and to present a curriculum for sales training that any sales professional, if they steadily apply it to them, will become a champion in sales. Today is about training salespeople, not necessarily the entire organisation. but the one or two people that the company says, 'I want to get better at sales.'”

Bryan said TGL Group is committed to solving all the issues organisations have when it comes to selling, sales, their sales groups and their sales process.

“Over the last nine years we have built out a programme of support that includes training of sales professionals, coaching of sales executives, designing sales processes, strategising around sales effectiveness.

“Our work has expanded from Jamaica – we now serve the Caribbean, with some of our larger clients in Barbados, TT, Guyana, Belize – and our customers have included some of the largest companies in finance in Jamaica, as well as in TT, where we’ve been working with Unit Trust and First Citizens Bank to really overhaul their sales acquisition. We opened our TT office nine months ago.”

Executive chairman and co-founder Duane Lue Fung said the company’s aim is to fill the gap in sales training.

“We’re seeing that everyone in sales needs help. There’s a big gap in the industry, and it comes from people not having the foundation of skill they need.

"It’s really our job, whether it’s Jamaica or Trinidad, to fill that gap and set that foundation because we want the region to win. When the region wins, we become stronger, not just individually but through Caricom.

“It’s important for us to grow from country to country and to really set the foundation of how important sales is as a profession. When salespeople do better, companies do better. When companies do better, the economy does better. When the economies do better, countries do better.

"So we’re on a regional mission and we’re really excited to be in TT to really just to help individuals and companies to be better.”

TT country manager Shantal Thomas said the company understood different industries had different needs for sales training.

“We are equipped to deal with training across all industries in TT, so much so that we have designed a unique strategy for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) corporate, and we are looking for ways we can add value to the FMCG manufacturing sector.

“Next year we’ll be coming with a different approach, specifically for the FMCG market, as well as keeping in alignment with our corporate companies who have unique selling and training needs.”

Bryan said the company was in discussions with the National Entrepreneurship Development Company Ltd (NEDCO) to provide training to entrepreneurs in selling for their curriculum.

“The truth is, entrepreneurs typically are excited about their product or service. They are technically able to either make it or deliver it. The biggest challenge entrepreneurs have is that they’re not necessarily great at selling what they do.

"So it’s not surprising that 90 per cent of startup businesses fail in the first year – not because their products aren’t good, but because they are not good at exposing and convincing and influencing someone to buy it.”

Bryan said TGL intended to provide sales training to entrepreneurs and others.

“You may have heard it said in there that there’s no place to go to get development in sales. Outside of the TGL School of Sales and Sales Management, nobody would know what to do, and so what we’re here to provide is a home for those who want to become not just good, but really excellent at sales. But frankly, for those who want to be effective in sales, that’s what we are.”

Among the lessons offered to the workshop participants were how to change their mindset to be more aggressive in their approach to selling, how to expand digital prospecting techniques, developing and improving personal branding, lead generation strategies and advanced selling strategies.

Lue Fung said the covid19 pandemic had changed how people bought and sold goods and services. He said people who were not able or willing to change to meet the fast pace would be left behind.

He recommended the salespeople read the book To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others by Daniel Pink, and reminded them that the person who does not read is no better than the person who cannot read. He said they should work harder on themselves than anything else.

“To be successful is to know the combination or formula to unlock your potential and accomplish your goal.

“I have to remind you who you are. You are hunters and you have to hunt it, kill it and drag it home.

"It sounds brutal, but every day there’s an exchange that must happen. My company has some product or service, and my job is to get people to buy them. I must identify the deal, have the conversation, qualify, quantify and then close the sale.

"That means I must go hunt it, go find it, and drag the sale back home. That's what we are paid for. If I don’t do it, somebody else will.”