Espresso: Gary Lavin, "DON'T SKIP SALES"..Sales is Leg Day for Brands

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0:22How did you get to the point where you were like, well, I need to get out the door? Well, I'd lost everything. So I had to fire the three sales reps. And it's funny, when I talk to young up and coming companies, the thing that they do the least is sell. And that's the thing you need to do the most. Because it's hard. You know, it's not nice getting rejected, getting some store manager, you know, kicking you out of the store and not interested in the product isn't selling, etc. The most important thing you can have in your company is sales. You don't, you know, TikTok isn't important if you're not selling bottles.

0:57You know, I always talk to people in Ireland. I give a bit of advice to a few companies. And the one thing they say is, I say to them is you know what's your rate of sale like it's the most important thing and then how many stores you in and they always say and I have it written down and they always say 200 and I go how did I know that because 200 seems to be like the basis the basic number for you to just say oh yeah I've got a drinks company or biscuit company or whatever now I'm gonna go and do the things that I like to do and skip leg day basically would you be my skip leg day you know the whole thing when you're in the gym and you go and you do your beach weights and you skip your legs because that's the tough thing and you end up looking like muscly on the top and skinny at the bottom that's what it called skipping leg day for business what's skipping leg day for challenge brands is that going out and doing the field selling yeah so and i know because i went through this so i was skipping leg day for the first seven years in my business i was hiring sales reps and saying i'll go do that and they'd come back and give me reports but they can never sell the product like i can and when i couldn't afford to have them anymore and i was losing everything I took a van back off one of the sales reps I had to let them go I had to fire the three sales reps I drove the van myself which was branded vid hit and I drove it all around the country and I sold into three and a half thousand stores in 18 months and stayed in bed and breakfast around the place and it was the only thing that rescued the brand had I not done that I wouldn't be here today I don't know what I'd be doing talk to me about the so you're in the van driving along what's what are you going in so it's not so these these stores had heard of the brand no so what the sales reps hadn't done their job or has it been quite a tepid selling it was like yeah they i think vidit was probably in a thousand stores and there's three and a half thousand stores and then it might have been in once and didn't sell and you know it's on the bottom shelf or whatever yeah so what i'm trying to work out is so and i agree with you it's like so what how do you approach leg day basically and what are some of the techniques you did to that think to have that well I think it's different for everybody I mean for me I was I was slightly entitled I suppose you know I see a lot of these entrepreneurs they don't come from tough backgrounds and I certainly didn't so I was always like oh things will be fine things will be fine and then when things weren't fine that was my motivation fear was my motivation so I finally got up off my ass and it was basically an accountant sat me down and she said your company is insolvent you need to let go of your reps and you need to go do the job yourself and I was like jeez I'm gonna have to go around sales repping and even though I was always good in a restaurant in a bar chatting to people the whole idea of actually knocking on a door going in and seeing a manager just scared me so I had to motivate myself to sit outside there and go listen if you don't get in here today you're going broke so that's motivation.

3:42And how did you talk to me about the feeling when you walked into your first independent because i love that feeling as i remember everyone remembers it yeah uh i was in a first in a store in um in hackney on uh just off broadway market and i ended up calling the guy like eight times been have you listed have you listed and the guy's like fuck off yeah but those things but i remember that so well like yeah tell me your first one well i do remember the first major rejection i got i actually you know i don't remember the very first sale i got but it's always an amazing feeling when you get sales but i remember the first major rejection I got because it just hit me like a brick I walked into a store and the guy was obviously having a bad day and I said and I kind of stood there meekly and then I kind of waved at him and I said I said hi can I chat to you about it he goes fuck off I don't want you in the store and it just it was like someone chopped a limb off it really shocked me you know I was like oh my god that's terrible I mean if someone's through that to me now I'd probably tell him to fuck off you know but I didn't really know how to react because I and so that knocked me back but I always led by the words from a song do one thing every day that scares you so what song is that oh it's I'll have to think about it but it's it's a brilliant song it's gosh I'll have to think about it later for the footnotes but I'll find it on the thing but it's it's brilliant it basically it's this guy American voice got this really heavy American voice and he talks about all these lessons through life and one of the things he says is do one thing every day that scares you and that's the one thing that I would always back in the day to motivate myself but i ended up loving it i ended up loving going into you know it's amazing as a friend of mine who had a fear of flying and to get over the fear of flying he actually became a pilot and he ended up becoming a commercial pilot so you can get over anything and actually end up enjoying it he loves planes now he flies them for the crack what did you do yesterday that scared you uh nothing i don't i so so that was that was that stage in my life and that and that is and that's an interesting segue actually because um someone asked me the day like what is next for me as in you know i know what's next for the brand but what is next for me and i kind of stopped to think and actually i'm in a really good place it kind of sounds cheesy but for me i'm living the dream that i want to live i like there's no there's no other mountain that i personally want to want to get across so i don't do things that scare me anymore i would if i needed to but i've got brilliant guys like ryan and my brother troy and ashling doing international stuff who do all those things for me so this is a really interesting point because we were saying thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast share this espresso on whatsapp if you liked it and also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description i spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy it's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink you're not going to get these in a business book so please subscribe and thank me later