A little bit about Simon

In the late 1990s I didn’t really know what sales was. My only points of reference were Del Boy Trotter, Gareth Cheeseman and Arthur Daley - hardly role models and caricatures of everything bad about a sales person. Pushy, arrogant and looking to better the customer - a legacy that still lives on in an establishment near you no doubt.

I began learning to sell in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s and still learn something new weekly. My first taste of selling was on the phone at a call centre selling insurance B2C where through excellent training I learned that selling something to someone who doesn’t want it is like pushing water uphill - a waste of time. When I moved to the North East I was lucky enough to have a mentor who taught me how to sell technical product through what became widely known as “solution selling” and also how to sell internationally to places as varied as Iran, Belgium and India and all with the added complexity of being indirect channel sales through agents and distributors.

I then went on to join a distributor who at one point sold 24,000 different products into almost any industry you could think of. One minute I was visiting a food factory and selling beard snoods to stop hair getting into donner kebab “elephant feet” as they were affectionately known. The next day I would be discussing fall rest equipment with a scaffolding crew. The variety and exposure to places like foundries, petrochemical and construction sites and a plethora of manufacturing plants told me two things. Number one was that I was interested in almost anything and number two was that I was good at this thing called sales but only when I took the time to understand the customer.

I progressed into my first sales management role in that establishment and learned that leading by example was a pretty decent school of thought. Out of over 1600 Sales people I had the second best numbers for 3 straight years. (The same guy in Manchester beat me every time but you can’t win them all!) I also learned that telephone selling can be very profitable if done right.

I landed my next job with one of my then customers and this is when I essentially travelled the world for the best part of nine years opening up industries I knew nothing about before I joined. I was lucky enough to visit and work with bottle-top manufacturers in Japan, beer-line cleaning experts in Germany, diving chamber manufacturers in Australia and cryogenic specialists in Czech Republic. I trained distributors and end users in sales of very niche products, delivered technical presentations to marine contractors in Rio de Janeiro, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Italy and Louisiana and all the time I was learning how different customers tick.

I ran a successful sales and marketing operation, rebranding divisions and product lines, launching new websites and I became the “go to” person in the industry which was our aim - to become the thought leaders. This resulted in becoming a member of the Board of Directors following a successful bid to land the global supply contract of a critical safety product to a large fast food brand beginning with M.

After a period as the Commercial Director for a group of companies selling a diverse range of products to the aviation, automotive, print and signage and mass participation events industry where I modernised the business and brought on new clients such as Tough Mudder, the thought of running my own company became a burning desire as I realised that I enjoyed helping other companies to reach their potential - whether it be outsourcing their business development to me, training them to get more out of their sales interactions or writing their technical sales copy.

I hope this helps you understand me a little more and I look forward to getting to know you and your company and helping you reach your goals.

Simon Lunt, Silent Sales