Just a pound, a pound, just a pound

The first project Renee and I worked on together was one of the most interesting, entertaining and downright funny.

The customer was... er... a major supermarket.  The supermarket was introducing financial services products and we had to train a shop floor sales force who would be selling to customers who were wandering up and down aisles doing their weekly shop.

What could possibly go wrong?

To add an extra layer of complexity, we were training a lot of people.  From August to December each member of the training team (and there were 8 of us) took a group of 12-15 new delegates.  Therefore, of course, abilities were very, very mixed.

As well as training delegates to sell we were also training and signing off banking staff from a major High Street bank to deliver the training going forwards.

There you are - that's the background.

The first funny incident happened in the very first week.  Once again we were using a lot of video to accelerate learning and in this particular session we were role playing the sale of credit cards.

Now, the credit cards came in three flavours (almost literally) with raspberry, orange and lemon designed cards on offer.  There was a lady called Yah (I promise you that's the truth) who was selling and a young guy who was playing the customer.

Here's Yah's sales technique:

(She backed the young guy into a corner and was standing about 6 inches from him with her boobs pressed up against his arm): 'So what colour card do you want?'  Says she in a breathy, Eartha Kitt type voice.

'What's your favourite colour?  Mine's raspberry... I'll bet yours is too.  Would you like me to order you a raspberry card?  Raspberry is so... delicious.'

By this time the young fella has backed himself right up against the wall and can go no further.  Finally, he looks over to Renee in desperation and mouths the word 'Help...'

Unknowingly, Yah has moved an inch closer and is still breathing down the guy's ear: 'Perhaps orange is more to your liking...'

Renee looks back at the guy and mouths a word in return: 'No...'

But the funniest sales technique of all came when the whole roadshow moved to Chester.

One of the savings accounts on offer could be opened with an initial deposit of a pound.

All I can remember is an older lady who wore sandals (and needed a pedicure) who thought that the £1 initial deposit was the main reason for opening an account:

'You can open an account for a pound, just a pound, that's all you need: a pound.  Give me a pound and I'll open an account.  It's a pound, just a pound, a pound...'

And on and on and on and on it went!