Top billing for Marcus

Mike Ridley
November 22 2007
Client: Sandler Sales Institute
Subject: Marcus Cauchi

Top billing for Marcus

Sandler franchisee invoices £90,000 in one month

SANDLER Sales Institute franchisee Marcus Cauchi has proved that white collar franchising can really pay off.

Marcus, a franchisee for three years, has just completed an incredible spell where he billed his clients an astonishing £90,000 in ONE MONTH for sales training.

Many high-fliers dream of leaving corporate life and running their own business with a white-collar franchise but they fear taking a drop in salary.

Marcus, 40, says: “One of my clients is the CEO of a Japanese bank. Thirty minutes after meeting him, I’d completed a £36,000 deal. They are paying me £1,000 an hour to turn up and do my stuff.

“Anyone who wants to get into the franchise should work out their hourly minimum and compare it to that. A thousand pounds an hour is my minimum fee now for corporates and I can charge up to £30,000 a day.”

Marcus has 20 small to medium companies on his books and he helps their directors and sales staff to grow their businesses.

One of the top five search engine optimisation companies also pays him around £12,000 a month to train their chief executive, two managing directors and their sales team.

And a top bank hires him for up to two and a half days a month to improve their sales.

He says: “They made their money back in the first three sessions by landing contracts worth a lot more than they are paying me.”

Marcus became a franchisee of the Sandler Sales Institute just over three years ago.

He says: “I got into this because I’d been in direct sales for 17 years and I sold every dog end product and service you can imagine – water filters, condoms in pubs, media sales and recruitment and telemarketing, software and consultancy.

“And when I came across Sandler I discovered to my shock and horror that I’d left behind about £56million in sales I could, and should, have won. Knowing what I know now, I realised the problem was always me.

“The other problem was that my managers were encouraging me to do all the things that traditional sales people do and telling me I was doing a good job. But I knew, and my bank balance certainly showed, I was doing a pretty miserable job.”

Marcus was made redundant from a telemarketing company just before Christmas. But his old boss quickly found a new job and took Marcus with him to work on contract generating sales leads.
 
He says:  “On day one in my new job, the marketing manager said ‘we’ve just been on this brilliant sales training programme and you should have a look at these books and listen to these CDs’. The arrogant twit that I was, I put them in my in-tray for five months.

“Eventually I took them home and in 15 minutes I had a Damascus moment. I cried. It was like being winded ten times in a row.

“I started using the Sandler system and my sales went down for the first two weeks. When you are learning something new they always do. And then they started climbing up and within three months I went from a close rate of in ten to closing two deals in every three.

“Then I started to mess with my pricing because it was getting too easy to close a deal. I discovered then I could sell against an incumbent service and I was charging between seven and 12 times as much.

“The net result was that I thought, if I can teach this, I can sell anything to anyone. So that is when I approached Sandler about buying the franchise.”

In October 2004, Marcus, a father of three, opened the first London franchise for the Sandler Sales Training Institute.

He says: “I have no regrets whatsoever, it is the best thing I’ve ever done. The 17 years of constant screw-ups and failures make me good at what I do because there’s almost nothing my audience throws at me that I haven’t done myself.

“One of the best things to do is recognise that failure is part of the human condition and you learn way more from your failures than your successes.

 “I had a defining moment in the first six months after I’d set up the franchise, training clients to sell using the Sandler method. One of my clients brought an old friend of his to the training session. This man sold promotional materials and we did a 43-minute role-play in front of the group.

“ Just 30 seconds in I thought I was dead. But I depended on the Sandler system to save me, and it worked. It was a real watershed moment for me because at that point I realised that if you depend on the system it never fails you.

“You get one of four good outcomes; a ‘yes’ with an order; a ‘no’ with a lesson; a ‘no’ with a referral; or a ‘no’ with a clear future – which means a clearly defined next step. It’s not just, ‘call me in the future,’ but it is, ‘call me at 10 o’clock on a given date and we will talk about budget decision and timescale.’”

Marcus Cauchi believes too many people go into franchising without having the selling skills necessary to grow their business.

He says: “From a franchise perspective what is interesting, is that you are buying a sales job. Most people think that because it is a franchise, business will suddenly and miraculously appear.”

Marcus, who bought a new Mercedes from the money he earned in that one month says that many people who go into franchising fail to realise that they need to be sales people.  Even though you are buying into a tried-and-trusted brand, you still have to sell.

He says:  “One of the beauties of a franchise operation is you have a system and there’s a structure and there’s intellectual property in place, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel.

“But if you’re going to buy a franchise, recognise that you are going to have to go out there and sell.

“In my book, the ideal franchisee for a Sandler franchise is someone who has failed a lot, is battle-scarred and a little bit angry.

“My performance started to grow when I started to get angry – mainly at myself – because I cannot blame anyone else. It was my own stupidity.

“Most of us in sales are pretty damaged goods. Sales people are needy and desperate because they love to be liked. They have a need for approval.

“When I set this business up, I thought I was a good sales person. But truth was I was nothing. I was doing a lot of the jumping through the prospect’s hoops. They’d say ‘send me some information, or send me a proposal’and I’d do it. I’d do a pitch. But I had no control.

“My clients, who learn the Sandler technique will typically experience between 100 and 1,200per cent growth in the first year and they will continue to experience that growth every year if they implement the habits I teach them.”

BREAKOUT:

Here are just some of the stories of companies where Marcus has helped improve  sales:


He says: “A web design company came to me in December 2004 and I worked with them throughout 2005. They had a £165,000 turnover and were losing anything up to 30per cent on every deal they did because of the level of servicing, costs and sales.

“They hadn’t paid themselves properly for three years. Average sales cycle was 18 weeks and one in 16 close rate. Their average order was three thousand pounds.

“Twelve months to the day they had £1.2million turnover with a 60per cent net profit, a two-week sales cycle and a £25,000 average order value and a nine in ten close rate.

“Bear in mind these guys were web-designers not sales people but I’ll put them up against anybody in traditional sales and they’d win the contract.

“A printer telephoned me on 7 Jan 2006. He employed seven people, was doing £365,000 turnover and losing £3,000-£6,000 a month. Most of his business came through print buyers and he was lucky to work on a margin of 20per cent.

“A year later he was doing £1.8million and this year he will do £2.5million. He has an average margin of 35per cent and over 70per cent of his business is now direct with the customer and his close rate is nine in ten.

“The interesting thing was that he didn’t buy sales training to save his company. In fact he was worried that his daughter would have to leave her independent school and go to a comprehensive because he couldn’t pay the school fees.

“I have also been working with a life coach who has seen his sales increase 750per cent in eight months.

“He used to charge £2,000 for an eight-week programme and get paid in instalments. Now he charges £15,000 and is paid up front.”

For more details about becoming a Sandler Sales Institute franchisee, click here...