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Sales mastery is key to success
SALES professional, keynote speaker and trainer, Peter McKeon – known for his extensive authorship and presentations on the sales sector – has joined Queensland Leaders as an Industry Expert.
Perhaps best known for the work his Salesmasters organisation does, Mr McKeon has joined Queensland Leaders as a way to “give back” to the state by assisting up-and-coming business leaders to better structure and prepare their sale forces. 
Over several decades of corporate sales training, Mr McKeon has worked with companies large, small and fast-growing, including Origin, Telstra, Sekisui House and Foxtel.
Mr McKeon said organisations like these and many others put their faith in his Salesmasters team because of their ability to “actually make a difference”. He put that down predominantly to the vast real-world sales experience Salesmasters had been able to bring to the table.
“Thirty years is a long time to be in any industry these days, with the fast paced environment we live in, careers are lived, breathed and dumped in as little as five years,” he said. After three decades, he remained focused on keeping up with trends, opportunities, business practices “and relating them back to what we know works without reinventing the wheel”.
“We hear the term ‘best practice’ everywhere, it’s as if doing something well is a global phenomenon,” Mr McKeon said. “Seriously, we’ve been doing things properly for years; it’s not like Gen X and Y just invented the school of thought that doing something that gets a result is ‘new’.
“For Salesmasters, best practice means more than doing something well and getting a result. It means that you identify, develop, mould and invest in the absolute best way to continually achieve results and keep on practising, because we all know that practice makes perfect.”
Mr McKeon said it takes nous, experience and tenacity to transform average sales people into sales geniuses.
“There’s no sheep dipping with what we do at Salesmasters,” he said. He is strongly against the popular “group hugging sessions” often sold as sales training. He said they only essentially make people feel good “but give them nothing tangible to hold onto and use as a base for driving quantifiable and lasting change for the organisations they work for”.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all industry,” Mr McKeon said. “You have so many different types of people with varying skill sets, derived from multiple backgrounds and cultures, so of course a one-size-fits-all training course will not work.
“Customisation is the key to obtaining and realising success. It’s something that Salesmasters do well.”
The focus on practical sales training to drive long-lasting outcomes is what sets Salesmasters apart and explains how Peter McKeon has become regarded as a thought leader in his industry in Australia.
In July, Mr McKeon becomes vice president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland (CCIQ) and he sees this new role as a way he can also give back to the state that helped shape his business.
M McKeon said every big business started as a small business at some point.
“To be able to help shape our state is important to me, it’s all about making our economy stronger, more resilient and better prepared for the fluctuations of the fluid market we live in,” Mr McKeon said. “Keeping up with it all is a challenge but it needs to be done if you intend to succeed. Understanding that your sales team is as fluid as the market is important, they need to be kept current, to know what technology is available to help them to perform and attain targets.
“Being lean with their processes means that they are likely to be out on the road more, on the phone more, in front of people more, which, inevitably means more sales for your business, so embrace change, embrace technology, acknowledge that change is a positive and keep up.
“Keeping up means research, it means you need to develop not only your products and your operations, but your team. Without your team you have no business so invest in your biggest assets – your staff – and they will invest in you.
“Your team is made up of individuals, treat them as such,” he said.
“I have not met one corporate CEO who wanted us to do a two-day workshop and then leave the rest to fate.
“Top tier companies all understand that each person is unique; they all have core characteristics that need to be evaluated, assessed and understood, then taken into consideration before targets are set. What motivates one may not motivate another.”
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