More sales. better teams. fast!
Technical salespeople hiding behind email? Reps who don’t pick up the phone? The Renegade Methodology gives your technical sales team the skills to have the right conversations with decision-makers and build breakthrough momentum.
Elon Musk’s ingenious trick for turning technical experts into target-smashing sales machines
(Just one of the countless prospecting, selling, management & Leadership tips you’ll learn in my online and face-to-face sales training programmes)
Dear Sales Renegade,
If you’re an ambitious business owner or sales leader who wishes your technical experts and sales reps stopped hiding behind emails and started having more of the right conversations with potential customers…
…you’re in the right place!
After 20 years in sales, I’ve helped thousands of engineers, scientists and technical reps build pipeline, close deals and as much as double their revenue – without the need for natural talent, old-school pressure or endless cold calls.
If you’re committed to improving your sales team’s performance, then read through the information below and book time for a sales consulting call.
Your friend,
Tom Mallens
Book a sales consulting call
N.B. If you’re not sure that improving your team’s sales results is the right thing, it may be too early for us to talk. These calls are for people that know they want to help their people do better – but want to figure out if I’m the right person to help!
The brutal truth about b2b sales and why so many business development reps struggle…
The unfortunate truth is that almost no-one grows up wanting to work in B2B sales. A pilot? Sure. A salesperson? Definitely not.
People fall into sales when their childhood dreams don’t work out and they don’t have any other options on the table.
Or, when they realise they could ditch their career as an engineer, scientist or technical expert, and make more money by switching over to a biz dev role.
Either way, the result is salespeople who have all the technical and product knowledge to succeed but none of the sales skills. Which usually means they:
– Hide behind emails and Linkedin messages
– Avoid picking up the phone as much as possible
– Claim to always be “too busy” to do any outbound prospecting
– Focus on solving technical problems for free to try and win business
– Fail to ask the right commercial questions to qualify opportunities
– Spend hours (or days) working on proposals for people that never buy
– Immediately default to discounting to get deals over the line
– See quoting as a big victory (then cross their fingers and hope they win)
– Rarely speak to or visit their existing customers (let alone try and upsell them)
And if all that wasn’t bad enough…
– Keep doing the same thing because it’s “just the way things are” in the industry
I know all this because, once upon a time, that was me.
Me (and Mrs Mallens) at the NEC in my early days as a technical sales rep.
Many years ago, as a young technical sales rep, I was in charge of the UK territory for a major European chemical manufacturer.
During trips to the company HQ, I got extensive training on every aspect of the industrial adhesives I sold.
You name it, there was a scientist with a PhD in chemistry explaining the melting point, viscosity, specific gravity and more.
After days of memorising data sheets, I thought to myself, "with all this product knowledge, just imagine how much I'm going to sell".
I hadn't booked my first appointment but I was already imagining the size of my commission cheque.
At the end of my product training, a colleague handed me some business cards and waved me off. "See you at the sales meeting in a month," he said.
After a few weeks of rejection, fruitless cold calls and pointless meetings, the painful reality hit me like a brick in the face.
Specialist technical products don't sell themselves!
In fact, despite all the technical training, I didn’t have the skills needed to do what actually mattered. Things like:
– Finding, qualifying and prioritising new leads
– Attracting inbound enquiries on Linkedin
– Making prospecting calls and booking meetings
– Running effective discovery meetings
– Closing business without discount
– Upselling and cross-selling to existing account
To make matters worse, I got verbally annihilated in my first sales meeting for not bringing in enough business!
In case you hadn’t guessed, I still remember the feeling of injustice.
During a visit to LinkedIn’s head office in London back in the early 2010s
The strange reality is that while professional footballers spend their whole week training for a 90-minute match.
Professional salespeople – who everyone in the business relies on – typically spend somewhere close to 0 hours preparing for a full-time job trying to sell.
And because so few salespeople practice their sales skills in a safe training environment, guess where they end up practicing by default.
You guessed it, on potential customers.
I really hope I don’t need to explain why that’s a terrible idea.
Very few technical salespeople ever get taught how to sell:
– How to attract leads on Linkedin
– How to make effective phone calls and book appointments
– How to run productive discovery meetings
– How to close deals without discounting
– How to build and manage a pipeline and territory
– Or how to retain and grow existing accounts
(I did an MBA business degree several years ago and even then, they didn't teach sales properly.)
It still stuns me that so many companies expect miracles from their salespeople but never actually give them the training, skills or knowledge to deliver.
Most companies give their people plenty of product training and knowledge but product knowledge and sales knowledge are two very different things.
Product knowledge makes you feel clever.
Sales knowledge makes you money!
That's why I've put more than 20 years of lead generation, prospecting, sales and account management knowledge into my online and face-to-face training programmes.
It means your sales team don't have go through an endless series of painful mistakes like I did.
Instead, they can skip ahead to implementing what works in generating a regular stream of quality leads, lucrative opportunities and profitable deals.
Working with the US sea freight logistics sales team of Keuhne+Nagel in Atlanta, Georgia.
Today, I not only train salespeople in a structured sales methodology that can help them as much as double their revenue.
I create fun and engaging learning experiences that bring the training to life and help people put it into practice easily, confidently and consistently.
By working with me – and depending on the programme you choose – you and your team will learn invaluable sales skills, including:
– Elon Musk’s ingenious trick for turning technical experts into target-smashing sales machines – despite popular perception, engineers, scientists and technical specialists like Musk make fantastic salespeople if they have the right process to follow.
This is the untapped potential I help you and your team unlock, together with…
– The fishing analogy that landed a £6K order from a single Linkedin post within days of his first training session – and has helped him get a steady stream of inbound leads on Linkedin ever since.
– How an ageing sales veteran staring down retirement doubled his revenue from £1.5m to £3.1m – by working 5 hours fewer every week (and 10% less hard).
– An “anti-pressure” psychology trick that gets even the busiest decision-makers taking time to reply to you — even in crowded, hyper-competitive industries where most salespeople get ignored.
– The planning routine salesman used to hit and stay at 175% of target in the ruthlessly competitive and cost-driven world of sea freight logistics sales – where many reps don’t last beyond their probation.
– How a 90-second napkin sketch won a client a £103K/year order – and finally solved their on-going account management headaches.
– An ‘up-close-and-personal’ strategy I used to close a 5-figure deal (that was nearly all profit) – even though the decision-maker told me he wouldn’t take a decision that day.
– The football fan tactic a self-confessed ‘boring’ financial expert used to rise from also-ran to top 3 in his company’s national sales rankings – and make the pain and frustration of competitive tenders a thing of the past in the process.
– Three words that effortlessly get you back in control of sales conversations any time you feel under pressure or struggle to answer a prospect’s question.
– An absurd conversation starter that virtually compels even the most reclusive potential customers into productive conversations — instead of instantly lumping you in with every other desperate salesperson trying to call them.
– An ancient Greek questioning strategy inspired by Socrates that means prospects can never put you under pressure and you never have to explain, justify or defend your credibility or pricing again.
– A counter-intuitive objection handling technique that dissolves objections before they ever become a problem – That automatically makes you and your offer more appealing and compelling to prospects.
– The creator of Wonder Woman’s strategy for building nearly instant rapport with prospects so they feel magnetically drawn to you – perceiving you as more charismatic, likeable and persuasive than you actually are.
– A sales approach inspired by Henry Ford that makes your sales results as regular, predictable and as scalable as the Model-T itself.
– A jaw-droppingly simple strategy for getting leads on Linkedin that one client used to win four new accounts worth £68,500. (N.B. It’s so painfully obvious that virtually no-one (except a small group of sales renegades) realises how to do it, let alone applies it consistently.
– A five-word question for the end of meetings that landed me the biggest deal of my career – and helped a client land six new accounts worth £60k-£70k within two months of working together.
– A ‘Ghostbuster’ email that practically forces prospects that have gone cold to come out of hiding and restart discussions with you – It’s so powerful it often helps people hear back from prospects that ghosted them within minutes.
– A six-word question that unlocks the real reason people want to buy – So you’re never forced to send pointless proposals to people who don’t end up doing business with you.
– And much more…
Book a sales consulting call
N.B. If you’re not sure that improving your team’s sales results is the right thing, it may be too early for us to talk. These calls are for people that know they want to help their people do better – but want to figure out if I’m the right person to help!
“In just two months with Renegade, I’ve secured six new accounts worth £60k-£70k.”
– Tom Ashton, The Phillips Screw Company
“Over the past two-and-a-half months, the transformation has been huge. I’m now securing 2-4 quality meetings every week, something I simply wasn’t achieving before.”
– Dom Webb, BDM in electronics manufacturing
“Since the training, I’ve set up 4 trading accounts direct from Linkedin and have 4-5 more indirectly. It’s an extra £68,500 of business for us.”
– James Kynaston, BDM at Horizon Platforms
“Got a £6K order from a LinkedIn post today.”
– David Ayling, founder of Straighpoint
“The deal’s worth around 5k units every second month, so 30k units per annum, value around £103k per annum.”
– Paul Hindle, key account manager at Leggett & Platt
“As a result of following your advice, within 4 weeks, I generated £10K from Linkedin activity.”
– Benjamin Dennehy, sales trainer
“Having joined the training around 30 days ago, I’m delighted to say I’ve already achieved a 140% ROI.”
– Natalie Rooney, MD at the Midlands Wedding Show
Book a sales consulting call
N.B. If you’re not sure that improving your team’s sales results is the right thing, it may be too early for us to talk. These calls are for people that know they want to help their people do better – but want to figure out if I’m the right person to help!
Clients I’ve worked with include…
