by Roy Sheppard

Two years ago I was a keynote speaker at the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management Successful Selling conference - another speaker described what impact new technology will have on selling in the years to come. Not all of it was good news for those salesmen who see themselves as particularly experienced. Many in the audience laughed at her nervously.

Anyone who is proud of their Luddite status and refuses to invest time learning about technology will suffer in the longer term. Future sales success will only go to those people and organisations which embrace and maximise the use of existing and future technology.

Take this article as an example. It is different. It may look like everything else on these magazine pages, but it is not being typed into a word processor. I am dictating these words directly into my computer. The words I speak are instantly displayed on the computer screen. The magazine which this was originally written for was not equipped with e:mail (may be they couldn't afford the £150 for the modem and £10 a month for internet access!) this actual text could have been sent electronically and then pasted directly onto the page without ever being typed.

This technology has dramatically increased my own productivity. Before I used the IBM VoiceType hardware and software I would slowly type every word of my scripts, articles and books. But now all creative work is done with my arms folded in a comfortable chair speaking at up to one hundred words per minute.

Currently I am working on a number of different writing projects. One, a book to be published later in the year is called "Your Personal Survival Guide to the 21st Century" - guess what, part of it deals with the future impact of technology in our work! The other is a detailed manual to accompany a series of seminars I present for The Freelance Centre aimed at helping self-employed people to earn more, keep more and attract better customers and clients. The manual is a huge undertaking and involves a great deal of writing; by using this voice recognition technology the writing is far quicker so I can then concentrate on the research and editing without getting bogged down with the laborious chore of typing the first draft of the text.

As a writer and Business "Oprah Winfrey" at sales and marketing conferences, and with time in such short supply and with no full time secretary to lean on, I must rely heavily on technology to improve my productivity in this way. More and more one-person businesses are exactly the same. But "What I hear you say, "will this do to help me to sell more - I don’t need it because I have a secretary to do my typing? Without a secretary you can get more done in less time - a re-deployed secretary could be your future passport to dramatically improved sales.

Here’s how. Recently, I fronted a conference for a financial services company. A significant part of my role involved interviewing key members of staff. As part of the proceedings the company Chairman presented awards to the best sales performers. I suggested a couple of weeks beforehand that it might be a good idea to interview the guy who was their top salesman about how he managed to earn over £125,000 ($190,000) a year in commission. Initially, the management weren't too keen because they thought he wouldn't want to share his knowledge. They were wrong - he was quite happy to explain exactly what he did so that his colleagues could copy his techniques.

When I asked him why he was so open about his techniques and methods he said "I have always believed that if I help others to be successful, my own success will take care of itself. I live by that."

This very successful salesperson then talked the assembled audience of 5-600 people through exactly what he did. The process starts when he goes away for a weekend to sit down quietly and work out exactly how much commission he intends earning in the following year. If you're familiar with the work of the American author Stephen Covey - this is what he calls - beginning with the end in mind.

The salesman would then work out how many sales he would have to make to reach that figure. From this figure he would calculate roughly how many sales calls and meetings he would have to arrange - on the basis of what he knew from past experience was his conversion rate. From this he analysed every part of his activities and isolated those areas which he would delegate to someone else. Delegation turned out to be the crucial difference between him and his colleagues. He was the only salesperson in the company who had employed someone else to work as his assistant.

Someone from the audience made the comment that he too had considered employing someone else to do all the mundane work but he wasn't able to afford it.

This raised two key issues;

Firstly Alistair, the successful salesperson said that before he had taken on someone else he too had been afraid of not being able to afford it, but knew that if he was going to achieve different results he would HAVE to do something fundamentally different. He realised that instead of not being able to afford an assistant he couldn't afford NOT to get one. This led onto the second point. His assistant was not employed to do the mundane - even though part of her role was administrative. She didn’t waste all her time typing letters. She was there to help generate business. This was an important distinction. Her activities were clearly focussed towards finding prospective new clients, and setting up the meetings. This freed the salesman up to concentrate on what he was best at - selling on a one to one basis. For the first 18 months he trained her to such a high level that she was no longer a cost - she paid for herself with the business she was able to attract - this had the effect of motivating her

As I was finishing my interview he added a fascinating point. He said - I'm always asked the secret of my success - but when I give them a full explanation - invariably I will hear "I understand what you are saying - it all makes sense but what is the secret. They don't get it, they seem to think that there must always be something else - there really isn't. They seem to think there must be because it sounds too straight forward - he said - they are the people who will never learn. I tell them what to do - but it's only those who have the guts to do it who reap the benefits. It's all about stepping outside your comfort zone.".

By learning to use technology to its full, the time savings will help you concentrate on achieving better results rather than wasting your valuable time on non-productive "busy" work.

Now that I have become familiar with this voice recognition, its accuracy is quite remarkable - up to 95 percent - and so fast! Every time you use the dictation system, the computer voice model is updated. This means it becomes more accurate each time it is used. It does not totally replace the keyboard - but helps to get all the material into the computer - which is the most time consuming and for me, the most frustrating. However, on the first day of use, just like anyone with a new toy, I needed to show it off to Frankie, my future wife. To impress her I spoke into the computer while gazing into her eyes and said "I love you". The computer displayed the words; " I love Graham". To this day I cannot understand how it came up with that.

My fiancee asked if there was some thing I needed to tell her before we got married! My productivity may have soared, the recognition accuracy has certainly improved, but the computer is now always referred to as Graham

Roy Sheppard’s technology toolkit includes a Pentium 120 Megahertz Hewlett-Packard PC (known as Graham) with a 1 Gigabyte hard drive and 32 megabytes of RAM and internal 28,800 modem, a portable Macintosh computer with 14,400 modem and add-on floppy drive, a desk-top duo docking system, CD-ROM, HP laser and colour ink jet printers, a flat bed scanner, an 88Mb Syquest drive and Iomega 1Gigabyte Jaz Drive to backup data, various applications including; optical character recognition software, voice recognition hardware/software, digital audio editing, a remote answer machine, a fax machine and a GSM mobile phone.

© Roy Sheppard 1996

Return to Home Page