Imagine closing a six-figure deal without a fancy presentation, a company brochure, a price list, or even a short leave-behind. Imagine convincing the executives of an international company that in a year from now you are confident they will feel personal satisfaction in knowing that they made the right decision to buy your products/services, even when your price is higher than your competitors’. Can’t believe it? Then talk with Bob Henricks and he’ll tell you how it’s done — if you can take it. In his passionate, hard-hitting, in-your-face approach, Henricks takes students on a sales training journey of self discovery, goal setting, selling techniques, and strategies for growth and success.
     “Sales is all about having the guts to differentiate yourself from your competitors,” says Henricks, president of Henricks Corporate Training & Development, Inc., a Sandler Sales Institute. “It is all about the person delivering the message, not about the products or services you are selling. When it comes down to it, products and services are all the same. You must communicate your message and build a trusting relationship with clients, because everything you do as a salesperson must be based first on trust. Without trust, you have nothing.”
     Bob Henricks started Henricks Corporate Training & Development, Inc. www.henrickscorp.sandler.com three years ago after a successful career in corporate sales. The company is a licensed franchisee of the Sandler Sales Institute, one of the country’s leading sales training systems. Henricks was drawn to the company because of his own experiences with the training program. “I am a student of my product,” he explains. “It is 100 percent of who I am. Other traditional sales programs I experienced were seminar-based, and you simply cannot teach people to communicate differently and change life-long habits in a three-hour seminar. It takes an on-going commitment.” 
     The company offers programs in sales, sales management and management training and development. Training programs generally include a 1-year membership which includes five 2-1/2–hour sessions per month, one-on-one coaching and workshop application and skill development. Henricks offers on-site training for larger clients, and holds sessions at the company’s offices on Little Avenue in Charlotte for small and mid-sized companies. Over the past three years, Henricks and his associates have worked with hundreds of corporate clients and individual sales people building the business to exceed $1 million in revenues. Each year, the company has consistently tripled its previous year’s revenues, to become Sandler Sales Institute’s number one franchisee nationally based on materials purchased from the institute.  

Dare To Be Different

     Determined to practice what he preaches, Henricks differentiates himself in unique ways. “For instance, we have no company literature, brochures or price lists,” explains Henricks. “The reason is that there is one rule in sales that says, ‘Don’t do the same things your competition is doing’. If I sent over a package of information to a client, I wouldn’t be any different from the next sales training company. So, I don’t. I sit down face-to-face with potential clients and openly discuss what we have to offer and how they can benefit from it.” 
     Indeed, Henricks recently relied on what is referred to as a series of “pain-based” questions to land a two-year deal worth more than $600,000 – without a single piece of literature or showing an example of the product. “There are basically three levels of questions and issues you cover as a salesperson. The first is the service level where you ask questions that help you understand the prospective client’s current situation and potential needs,” explains Henricks. 
     “The next level involves more strategy, in which the salesperson needs to understand why he is there, why the client accepted his call and invited him in for a discussion. For instance, the company we called on is an international company with global brand recognition and multi-million dollar sales. Yet, they were still interested in knowing about our services, and there was a reason for it. We discovered that in spite of all the current sales, they still had multi-million dollar sales problems that needed to be attended to.”
     “The third level involves the personal impact that results from a client’s decision to buy or not to buy,” says Henricks. “It’s important to remember that people still buy based on emotion from with the people they trust the most,” he explains. “It is our job as salespeople to help clients understand the impact that making the decision will have on them personally down the road. It is okay with me if they decide not to buy my services. But if they decide to decline my services, and then later realize that they missed an opportunity to either help better support personnel, or more positively impact the company’s bottom line, how will that make them feel about themselves and their responsibility to the company?
      In our case, we were about to get this company’s senior leadership to recognize there is an upside to our training, as well as a cost, but also got them to understand that there could be a downside if they didn’t buy it now.”  

Living With A Stigma

    According to Henricks, professional sales people often suffer from a stigma, a stereotype that makes many people cringe when having to deal with them. “It’s sad because it is a misconception that sales people are only interested in themselves. That’s just not true. Most sales people genuinely care about their clients and want to help them with solutions to their problems or needs.” 
     This stigma, he says, tends to hold some people back from reaching their full potential, but he believes that most sales people simply don’t have the tools or skills to get beyond it. “Most people fail for one of three reasons,” explains Henricks. “They don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to do it, or they choose not to do it. This is the foundation of our programs. When salespeople make the effort to learn how to be successful, and how to make the tough decisions they need to succeed, they find they’ve taken themselves to a whole new level, and clients respond to that. After observing students in my classes all these years, I realized that people are prepared every day to make easy decisions, but not the hard ones. And they often think they shouldn’t have to make hard ones. But the truth is, if you want to realize your dreams and really live your life a certain way, it involves taking risks and making choices.”
      For corporate clients, Henricks emphasizes the importance of improving the organization as a whole, yet talks to the company’s leadership about the focus on the people in the business. “Our focus is on the individuals because when employees are happy and productive, the company is going to naturally benefit as a result.” Henricks urges management to be involved in the training to foster support and obtain buy-in from the ranks. 
     Jason Bessire, president of Bessire & Associates, a sales recruiting firm in Charlotte, credits Henrick’s programs with helping his company increase gross revenue significantly. “Bob delivers personalized, hardcore, ‘step on your toes’, highly effective sales training seminars. Our sales team increased sales by over 20 percent as a direct result of his sales training,” says Bessire. 
      For Bessire’s sales team, the techniques learned in Henricks’ classes have carried through to the selling arena. Mike McNamara, recruiting/internet specialist, had only experienced traditional sales training and liked the Sandler approach because it helped him realize that in the past he had simply been making presentations to clients instead of listening and learning about their true problems and discovering viable solutions.
     McNamara keeps the audio tapes from his training class in his car and listens to them to get pumped up in the morning during his drive to work. “I like the tapes because they motivate me and I like to take things from them to use during the day,” he explains. For instance, since McNamara does all of his selling on the telephone, he enjoys using a “reverse negative selling” technique that allows him to ask more questions and use the customer’s own objections to get them to admit the real problems they are facing, even after they’ve told him they don’t need his services.
      McNamara continues, “Recently, I had the president of a copier company tell me not to call him, but I did anyway. And although he was convinced he didn’t need me, I told him that he had already admitted to the problems he was having and that I had solutions for him. He hung up on me that day, but I persevered and now I have a contract with the company,” McNamara laughs. “I called him because I knew he was the ultimate decision maker and I took bold steps to throw back in his face what his problems were. He didn’t like it then, but he now respects me for being an honest, persistent salesperson and he trusts me more than anyone else. He will be a client forever.” 

Building Life Skills

     Uniquely, the Sandler training programs address several areas beyond sales skills, including professional goal setting, family priorities, financial goals and even spiritual needs. “Our business is a God-honoring company first and foremost,” explains Henricks. “So addressing people’s spiritual priorities is important to us because we know that every area of one’s life needs to come together to be truly successful. We really teach life skills – address all the areas that truly impact people’s lives.”
     For Devin Simmons, a regional manager for American HeathTech in Cantonment, Fla., going through Henrick’s training was evolutionary. Although he had experience in business as an administrator, and knew his company’s products well, his sales skills were lacking. “I had more product knowledge than most people in the company, but I didn’t have the experience, confidence or structure to relate that knowledge to my prospects. This training literally took my sales ability to a new dimension. I found that selling can be done in a professional, poignant, trusting and matter-of-fact manner. This training approach taught me how to present in a non-threatening way, put the prospect at ease, handle the parts of the job that are the least fun — like cold calling, and inevitably obtain our goals.” 
     Simmons, once asked by his superiors if Henricks’ training programs were worth the high price they were paying (anywhere from $2,000 to $8,000 per person for a one-year membership), he was able to cite two specific occasions when he closed deals that prior to his training he would never have achieved. “One time I had a meeting with a prospective client — a meeting with 22 company executives, and because I had changed time zones, I was one hour late for the appointment. They literally sat there for an hour waiting and when I got there and realized I had screwed up, I knew I had two choices — to give up and leave, or to be honest and apologetic and ask for another chance. There was a time when I would have run. But at that moment, all of what I had learned in training about honesty and integrity kicked in. I knew I still had a responsibility to these people, and I graciously asked them to give me 15 minutes to talk with them. After that I would let them decide if they wanted me to leave or stay. They agreed to the 15 minutes, and then they asked me to stay longer. Within 45 days I had a signed contract.” 

Living the Dream

     Stories like this motivate Henricks and confirm for him that what he is doing is making a difference for people, which is his ultimate goal. “Bob is really motivated to help people and he loves what he’s doing,” observes Paul Barnhill, a business consultant who works with Henricks on an on-going basis. “He is very passionate about his work and his family, yet he has achieved a balance that is really quite unique. He has reached out to other professionals like me to help him run various areas of the business so he can do the part he enjoys the most, and that is very wise for a business person running a small or mid-sized company.” Barnhill says he’s seen a lot of business people become consumed with their business because once it begins to grow, the leader is forced to handle other business responsibilities that either he is not qualified to do, or doesn’t have the time to do.
      “I truly am living my dream,” asserts Henricks. “I am very clear about my priorities and am able to keep them in line by understanding my core competencies and letting other people handle the rest. Most people start their own businesses because they are good at a particular job, and then they struggle with a growing company because they don’t know how to run it effectively. I let others help me so that when I go home at night to my beautiful wife and four daughters, I can stop thinking about work and put all my attention on being the best husband and father I can be – which is the most important thing to me.”