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 time at Art College in the mid-1970s. It started by accident really, I’d painted a few murals on my bedroom wall which my mother showed to some of her friends, they really liked what I’d done and asked if I…
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…
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…
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…
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 working in Aberdeen and enjoyed some early success with this new business in town. However, my fellow salespeople enjoyed less success and the combined impact of their collective failure was sufficient to convince the business owners that they made a mistake heading North to the Granite City and after 6 months they unceremoniously pulled the plug! They were gracious enough to offer me another position back down the road but having only just relocated my family to the area I decided to stay in Aberdeen and seek fresh opportunities elsewhere and believe me, there were plenty of opportunities in this vibrant growing economy which…
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 that the 2 guys I worked for offered me a stake in the business which I accepted in January 1983. Success continued, and our numbers grew as we rapidly became the premier suppliers of office equipment in Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland. Key appointments in every department helped us build on our continuing success, not least of all the fact that we’d secured the services of 2 of the best office equipment salesmen around, we were on fire! In 1989 we had a call from a fellow office equipment dealer based down South who told us about a company he’d been working with who’d helped accelerate growth in his business in a significant way, he wanted to make an introduction thinking that he could do the same…
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…
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 strategic improvements which would help us achieve the ambitious objectives we had set ourselves. This included the renewed focus on the Structured Sales Process we had such faith in, and the creation and implementation of a bespoke CRM system to allow us to manage the effort and resources required to achieve the success we knew we could. This…
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…
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…
Moonshine Murals
The Museum
The Market Trader
The Sales Representative
The Lost Opportunity
The start of an incredible journey
The Force Awakens
A New Hope
The Return of the Jedi
The Sales Jedi
