How to sell the right way in Dubai

At the age of 14, Mark Dickinson was washing glasses behind the bar and collecting linen for housekeeping in the UK. At the time, he chanced upon a magazine with the famous Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland on the front cover showing all the staff and managers assembled in front of the hotel. “I looked at that picture and said I want to be one of those managers. By the time I turned 23, I was appointed as one of the youngest managers ever of the Gleneagles Hotel.”

That was the first highlight of a 35-year-long career that has included roles spanning from a waiter and rising to directorial roles across hotels in Africa, China, Japan and the Middle East, now culminating in a career in hospitality consulting.

As a motivational speaker, Dickinson is seeking to supercharge customer experiences especially for those in the hospitality and retail sector. To that end, he will be conducting a one-day training seminar titled ‘Sell Like a Rockstar’ at the Renaissance Downtown Hotel in Dubai on January 19^th from 9am-6pm where he will share the some of the trade insights he has learned over the last three-and-a-half decades.

“The majority of people working in hospitality have never been formally trained in how to sell. They have been given a sequence of service and the rules of service. But they haven’t been shown how to do it. All they have done is absorbed it along the way by watching others.

“What they must be trained to do is to transform the customer service from being a process where it is a transaction of just being served into a sales experience that delights and delivers outstanding customer experiences and where every customer is treated individually.”

Dubai, Dickinson says, ranks alongside international destinations when it comes to the levels of customer service. But as is the case for the global hospitality and retail sector, there’s always room for improvement.

The seminar will be broken down into several segments throughout the day. The first segment will deal with neuroscience and how it affects the customer experience. “Firstly, we need to stimulate the senses of the seller and buyer. The rules of neuroscience apply to all human beings – certain things delight, and certain things turn them off. We’re going to talk about how the senses work, how the brain works, and how to trigger the senses in the customer.

That’s exactly what a Rockstar does – he excites your experience, whereby your senses are heightened and then you remember that experience forever. They appeal to all your senses simultaneously.”

The next part of the seminar dwells on customer psychology. “Customers do certain things in certain ways – they have the needs of consistency, variety, love and contribution. So we talk about how human needs are so vital to a positive customer experience.”

The following stage of the seminar moves into a practical phase where Dickinson will talk about body language. “The message is 55 per cent body language, 38 per cent words and 7 per cent is actual content. We go into the scientific approach of having the right body posture, how to nod, how to tip your head, how to use your open hand – because this is how we communicate powerfully with people.”

During the next segment, Dickinson and his team will walk through ten scenarios where they will teach attendees in small groups and pairs how to sell. “When they walk out, they’ve not just learnt the science and the theory, but they will have learned practically.”

Implementing his techniques, Dickinson says, could result in a 10 per cent growth to the manager’s business the next day – not a 10 per cent rise in gross revenue, he emphasises, but in the average spend per customer.

“We will give documentation that will help attendees measure that growth and share that information with the people who will be working with their customers.”

There are three categories of tickets for the seminar including Bronze Seats, Silver Seats and Gold Seats. All the ticket holders will get a copy of Dickinson’s Master Salesman’s Handbook that will encapsulate his training session. Silver ticket holders will additionally be eligible for a 15 per cent discount on any Done! training (Dickinson’s online e-learning training system) booked on that day while Gold ticket holders will have access to three online live coaching sessions on sales training, eight personal coaching sessions with Dickinson, a three months free subscription to Gulf Business magazine and also access to the post-event cocktail party on the terrace with Done! coaches and Dickinson.

“After 35 years of doing this business, I wish someone had taught me what I learned the hard way. The hard way was losing money, closing restaurants, finding concepts that don’t work and slowly going through the [learning] process. Today, we have successful restaurants, we work with successful people but it took a lot of hard work to learn this stuff. I want people to get it, to share it and for them to give it to their friends. I want service across the world to be the best it can be.”

Sell Like A Rockstar will take place on January 19^th at The Renaissance, Downtown Dubai, from 9am-6pm. Full details and registration here.