Moonshine Murals
1st March 1975
It’s funny, when you look back in time you can appreciate with the benefit of hindsight the things you have achieved in the building of your career. For example, I didn’t appreciate the significance of it at the time, but I took the first steps of my career in sales when I set up my first little business at the age of 17. That business was called Moonshine Murals and it helped fund my…
Read moreThe Museum
9th March 1976
After leaving art college I worked for a while with the Museum service in Falkirk, my job there was setting up displays and restoring artifacts, this image shows me with my company transport and an awesome haircut! There’s not much I want to say about this picture, other than, what on earth was I thinking going to work dressed like that? It was during my time at Falkirk Museum that I learned what it was to be motivated by the things that other people do. A colleague at the museum, a much older man, told me…
Read moreThe Market Trader
22nd June 1978
Inspired by the dreams of others, I hung my hopes on the shoogly peg of self-confidence and set about becoming a market trader, what a learning curve that was. Tough as it was at times, it could be cold wet with little footfall through the market, and every sale was hard-won, yet I loved working the stalls and developed a particular set of skills, which some say are even still apparent in my approach! I often joke that I was Dell boy, before Dell boy was Dell boy! I managed to survive in this world for a year or so until, in fact, my young wife advised me that I needed to get a proper job as we were expecting our first child. It didn’t take long to make that move, an advert in the local paper for a sales representative selling graphic art supplies. Well if that one doesn’t have my name is written all over it I thought, I…
Read moreThe Sales Representative
22nd September 1979
As it turned out I got the job, with a client list, a territory of my own, and a brand-new company car, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I had an intensive half-day training programme which rounded off with the presentation of a briefcase full of brochures and pricelists of things I knew nothing about, and a pat on the head as I set off out the door at the end of day 1 to sell my wares! I stayed with the company for 18 months, out of 40 regional salespeople, I was their top performer on my first month, and every other month I was there! It sounds remarkable I know, but if I tell you that a conversation with one of my colleagues a few months in explained how I was going about it all wrong, you’ll understand how my extraordinary performance came to be. I was…
Read moreThe Lost Opportunity
4th March 1981
So, imagine this; It’s 1981, the oil boom hasn’t quite got off the blocks yet and Aberdeen is booming. An office equipment supplier based in the central belt of Scotland is looking to take advantage of this exciting marketplace and move into town in April 1981. I joined that business as one of a small team of salesmen, most of the others were experienced office equipment salespeople. Even though my young family were130 miles away leaving me to put down roots and sort out a place to live, I loved…
Read moreThe start of an incredible journey
1st October 1981
I joined Grampian Business Products as their first salesman on the 1st of October 1981. There were only 3 of us at first, 2 of us selling and 1 of us servicing. Sales came quick and fast and the business enjoyed rapid early success, and I excelled in this new role, so much so…
Read moreThe Force Awakens
8th July 1989
1989 was when the ‘Force’ was awakened inside of me, having built what I thought was a successful career in sales over the previous 15 years, I met someone who revealed to me the mysteries of the ‘Structured Sales Process’, and my eyes were opened to a truer path. My Sales Guru made the case for following the ‘Structured Sales Process’ and embedding it in my day-to-day sales activities. He also illustrated the equal importance of understanding the relevance of measuring key ratios relating to sales activities and applying those ratios to specific objectives and then understanding the effort required to achieve them. This may sound simple, but trust me when I say that for most, it’s not so easy to apply. During the years which followed, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997………. we worked closely with our Sales Guru and embedded the ‘Structured Sales Process’ into our business. My appreciation of its importance and my growing understanding of how to deploy it delivered the results we were looking for. Over the next 5 years…
Read moreA New Hope
1st October 2002
2002 proved to be a very special year. The opportunity presented itself for a management buyout of the company I had grown up with these past 20 years, so along with one of my co-directors, and the support of our management team we successfully purchased the business from the major shareholder and set about growing the business towards a planned exit strategy some 10 year away. We took a good hard look at the way the business was structured and set about making several…
Read moreThe Return of the Jedi
1st October 2006
In 2006, I set up Blackmask to offer my services as a Sales Mentor. I was interested in working with smaller businesses who were struggling with sales, and I offered them support to address this using a range of affordable measures which could be easily implemented and likely to deliver early gains for the client. I also reconnected with my Sales Guru and mentor, the one who had been responsible for the mapping of my sales destiny since 1989. The timing could not have been better as my mentor was looking to rebrand and repurpose his own business, and we worked together on developing both the image and a the new business model which was to become Believe, a high level sales development organisation specialising in delivering achievable growth by embedding a Structured Sales Process into client businesses. Over the next 9 year I had the pleasure of working with many companies and developed a versatile programme of support…
Read moreThe Sales Jedi
7th December 2015
In December 2015 I accepted an invitation to Join Elevator and the Business Gateway, and since then have worked with hundreds of clients looking to grow their businesses and access the abundant portfolio of Business Gateway’s support services. In December 2016, I was asked if I could develop a training programme aimed at giving Business Gateway clients a useful insight into the Structured Sales Process, and to deliver it in such a way that delegates could take away useful tools that they could apply immediately to help optimise their sales activities. The programme I designed is unique inside the Business Gateway portfolio, and only delivered by myself within Aberdeen City and Shire, although I have ventured South to deliver workshops to our sister service based in Tayside. I…
Read more