Sales Academy Ltd
Sales Academy Background
Sales Academy Background
Sales Academy Ltd was founded in the UK in 1995 by Tim Powell and his friend Steve Clark. Together they built a business that stretched around the world running programmes and workshops for thousands of delegates from a number of blue-chip organisations. They worked extensively in the hard-hitting results-orientated world of sales development. From large capital sales of power stations and rail systems to mobile phones and central heating systems using home-grown thinking and methods developed at Sales Academy.
From Sales and Negotiation courses to Life Balance and ‘Mindfulness’ workshops, all the material was designed to generate pragmatic results with different people from all walks of life who found themselves needing to demonstrate success in a sales world. For over 25 years, delegates, consultants, and trainers all contributed to an understanding of how success happens and how individuals can make long lasting positive change if they want to (or need to).
The basis of our approach
Sales Academy ran thousands of workshops with 12 delegates in most workshops. Every single delegate was a unique individual. Some found success came easy and others worked long and hard for minimal returns.
On an almost daily basis we saw individuals repeating past mistakes, held back by what they chose to believe. We saw similar people with similar brain power achieving vastly different results simply because they had a different model of how the life works.
In the subsequent evaluations we conducted, it became clear that many of us go through life, collect ideas and beliefs, and then build these elements either consciously or unconsciously into a blue print or model for how life works.
Time and again we saw how the underlying elements in these models had significant consequences for individual performance.
For those operating with a conscious awareness of their model, it enabled them to orchestrate rapid and effective changes with obvious and immediate increases in performance.
However, it became clear that many individuals didn’t really know why they did the things they did. They were often working on the things that really mattered to them using a largely unexamined and ineffective model of how things work and how to make them happen.
Personal Paradigms
We could see that every delegate already had such a model. A collection of rules, beliefs and approaches, something we call a Personal paradigm they used to interact with the world. On our courses, they had the chance to re-evaluate the elements in their model that affected their success.
The delegates who were largely unaware of the existence of their own models and had no idea that changing it could bring about long-term positive improvements found changing hard.
Others who knew they had such a model understood that past results were linked inextricably to the effectiveness of their model rather than their own performance. You can’t win if you are playing the wrong game or thinking about it in the wrong way.
These delegates were open to new ideas and change. Evaluation was simply about performance rather than who was right or who was wrong and they rapidly and unemotionally absorbed anything that would help.
This is the key take away from all the discussions, workshops and coaching.
Modifying your model in the face of new or better ways that work makes sense but attempting to copy completely how someone else does something is not necessarily going to work for you.
Making sure your blueprint is yours means checking what’s in it, checking that it works for you, and making good quality decisions about what you include in it in the future. This will ensure you don’t stay stuck in old ways of being or doing that no longer suit you.
Changes
Inevitably there came a time when Sales Academy had delivered what we wanted from it and perhaps its true to say that slowly, with the main job done, our enthusiasm waned. We took our foot off the gas and took stock.
We concluded that the pragmatic lessons learned and shared amongst the consultants, trainers, and delegates were too useful to lose and someone should package it up and pass it on.
Tim has spent the last ten years distilling what was learnt and building it into a series of easily assimilated ideas that work.
The whole approach is not based on not telling people ‘what to do’ or ‘how to do’ things but by synthesising what is involved at a foundational blueprint level in achievement and success. These underlying foundations can deliver the material things some crave, the balance and peace that others desire, or a subtle mix of both tuned and crafted for each individual.
Whatever you choose the overwhelming lesson is that you must choose your method and your destination success. What this work gives you is a good picture of the landscape in which you can make your choices and a good idea of how you can pragmatically work the landscape tone have or do whatever you want.
The output so far
Books
The first book, How to stop losing Sales, written with entrepreneur and best-selling author Tim Kitchen of Exposure Ninja captures the essence of Sales Academy and provides the sales lessons in a format suitable for small and medium businesses to transform their sales performance.
Tim Powell now focusses his efforts on championing the elements of the underlying blueprint outside of a sales environment. Taking the lessons and experience from the Sales Academy Ltd training years and providing a framework to:
- Investigate what you have in your own existing blueprint.
- Customise it to best meet your needs in your world.
As a first step, the second book The Misaligned Monkey provides a revolutionary input to your blueprint targeted at changing your relationship with that voice in your head, permanently. A method to get the owner of that voice, your Monkey, onside to provide a faster route to:
- An effective meditation or mindfulness practice a
- Supercharge your efforts in any other pursuit where distraction takes its toll.
Currently the team are completing:
- This Misaligned Monkey website – this will never end!
- The Misaligned Monkey Challenge release date May 2021
- The Misaligned Monkey relationship quiz release date April 2021
The next books:
We will publish shorter books making the ideas of a Personal Paradigm and how to make it work for you alongside a better relationship with your Monkey a practical option.
Currently in draft
The Secret of your Success focusses on providing a route map to rebuild your own blueprint to make sure it serves you well whatever you want to do.
The short stories
Each reflecting a model element worthy of your consideration
Joes Cliff
A gentle exploration of real life mode development and change
About The Author
