I am an ex cobra sales team leader myself from the fundraising initiatives division.
Although they dont spend out large amounts of money on residential training courses like the other companies I have worked for, the ongoing training is amazing!
I do think however that their key is a
constant motivational environment and I dont think I can stress this enough!
Its nerve racking to start with, they really do just throw you in the deep end after a few days (
to be honest nobody expects you to achieve immediately, although your not supposed to know that lol), but they flush out those who will sink from those who will swim in the first week.
VERY hard environment, but very rewarding too. Multiple levels of promotion, where you can, like I did, also take control of your own recruitment.
Each office has their own traditions and methods. For example, my office would start at 9am, all divided into your teams with an hours product, sales or leadership training, followed by a short time for any form of questions (
e.g. yesterday I encountered this, what would you do?), finishing with a motivational speech by the managing director. Then ending the actual sales at 8pm, you had half an hour to complete and submit paperwork. Then from 8.30pm to 9pm everyone starts to relax and unwind, have a chat etc, then get called into a circle. The music goes on loud, 3 different sized bells are placed in the middle and the lights turned off (
with some flashing, moving light overlooking the circle). Everyone starts clapping in time with the music and you all just look at each other as nobody wants to go first lol.
Each sized bell signifies the sales achieved that day, 10-19, 20-29, 30+. You would walk to the middle, ring the bell, then walk around the inside of the circle with your hand up giving everyone a 'high 5' as they clapped!!
Up until this point, nobody was supposed to discuss how many sales they got.
Totally crazy, but GREAT motivational tool!
Well I thought ours was bad...
We were the selected 7 who went on a 2 week trip to the office in Northern Ireland that promoted TalkTalk. We had a meeting with the managing director / intro to their company etc, went downstairs to their sales teams before they started and all chatting about differences between offices, comparing training methods etc. When suddenly this cheesy music came on and they all jumped into line and started doing this strange dance, turning round, clapping under their legs etc. TBH it was so funny watching these men in suits dance like that and you could tell they were embarrassed in front of us. But that was apparently a motivational thing they do before starting on their sales for the day!
Another example is when our area manager would come to talk, which was always money orientated. For example he walks in with a load of cash, throws a £50 note on the floor and says
'whoever wants this, you have to run around the office, waving your arms and clucking as loud as you can like a chicken for 3 minutes'.
Sound strange? > Its all about comfort zones!
Anybody can sell while they are in their 'comfort zone', but real sales people can while outside of it.
The two main points that get drilled into you are:
1. Constantly pushing out the boundaries of your 'comfort zone'
(
for example, a common technique is that the trainer / leader would stand at one side of the office and tell the sales rep to stand over the other. They then had to shout their pre-determined pitch across the office and everyone else loud enough for the team leader to hear it clearly. If not, or they stuttered etc they had to start again louder )
1. Religiously working by statistics
The most well known, and one I personally hated when I started, is '
The Law of Averages'. Basically when you complete a
full pitch (
not partial) to 100 people successfully, there are 88/89 that just aren't interested, 10 '
on the fence' where you focus your sales skill to convert, along with 1 maybe 2 'logical' buyers that will automatically sign (
unless you have done something drastically wrong).
Wow, I could go on and on... I didnt realise I had written so much, sorry
:redface:
Anyway, theres an insight into the environment a typical cobra employee has come from. Very focussed, very target driven. However, their typical downfall is that the majority cannot work by themselves / be self motivating.
I am sorry to the OP as im sure this has gone off-topic. But since I wrote it I didn't see the point of deleting it
