Hi, Julian here, let me tell you a bit about me!
It was when I was about 32 that I realized the rest of the world generally followed some sort of career and I should do the same!
It happened by accident really. I was living in a small regional town in Australia and I needed a job. The local paper advertised for a part time sales person so I applied not knowing what I was getting into. To my amazement, I got it!
My first assignment was to sell a motoring feature. I was given a phone, a phone book and some old papers, and told to see what I could do over the next couple of days. So I just got on with it. By the second day I had just completed selling my 4th page of advertising when my boss asked me how I was going. I told him I had sold 4 pages and thought I could get another one or two as I had some call backs to do. His jaw dropped and he looked at me with disbelief. His expression led me to genuinely believe that I had done something chronically wrong and I started to apologize as he went rummaging through my booking forms.
He couldn’t believe it because the paper had never previously sold two pages of motoring features in a week let alone in two days.
And that was the start of what has been an amazing career.
It was a great start too, because working at the paper at 32 years old was like going back to school for me. There were lots of words to play with, and the paper seemed really happy to overlook my creative spelling and illegible hand writing, (remember there were no computers or spell check back then), because I wove such magic with the customers. It was a perfect win win scenario.
Over the next couple of years I went from part time to full time to sales manager (and got my first computer – with spell check!) I had a gift and I was using it. I pushed through all sorts of personal and professional barriers for about seven years until I felt I needed to play in a bigger pond and found my next job at ACP (Australia’s biggest Magazine publisher) at the big end of town in Sydney.
Again I went through rapid promotion and extraordinary sales success. I just seemed to have a knack for finding and closing opportunities and an enthusiasm that pushed me on and on. Within 2 years I became the Advertising Publisher for Australia’s biggest Health magazine which meant I started to take on much more responsibility.
During the next 15 years I worked as Sales Director and Senior Sales Manager for some seriously cool online agencies and also worked for Getty Images which was the biggest ecommerce company in the world at the time as their Senior Sales Manager for Australia and New Zealand.
My entire career was based on business to business sales and most of the time I was selling solutions rather than a single product. No 2 sales looked the same.
When I was at ACP I worked with a very flamboyant English sales guy called Hamish Guild. Hamish was the first person to talk to me about ’sales process’. He seemed to have been trained by some of the best people in the UK and really knew his stuff. Because he had such a big personality he made the science of selling interesting and from then on, I developed a real awareness of the importance of sales process, sales technique and salesmanship.
As a Sales Manager, I realized the importance of being able to bring sales process and sales skill 
training to my teams. My natural sales gift was pretty well non transferable, but the science of selling was something that I could teach anyone and that was the beginnings of Sales Made Simple.
Over about 5 years I developed my process and refined everything I’d learned into 4 easy steps. Doing this completely revolutionized the way I sold. My approach shifted from a high energy persuasive style to a tactical, strategic and calculated approach.
I became obsessed with playing with my sales process because it was so robust and effective. It literally carried me no matter what sort of day I was having and I soon realized how valuable it was in a true sales environment.I won 4 high level Sales Director jobs over a ten year period because I brought my sales process with me.
My process became so simple and effective that I decided to write Sales Made Simple and then develop a business plan around delivering this valuable training via multiple channels.
And that’s where I am today, teaching small and medium enterprises the secret of sale success using a smart sales process.
Quite simply, Sales Made Simple is a tool for sales people and business owners. It is a catalyst for SHIFT. It will shift the sales experience, the sales results and the bottom line. I’ve seen it work over and over again.
It gives me enormous pleasure to see people around the world experiencing the extraordinary sales success that comes from Sales Made Simple.
Outside of work, my life revolves around family and a close group of friends. I”m married to Elle and Dad to 2 great boys, Noah who lives with us in Sydney, and Jodes who lives in the UK. I love anything to do with the waterfront whether it’s mucking around in boats, swimming in Sydney Harbour or walking along the foreshore, and I do still play a little competitive soccer.
After so many years as a professional salesman I’ve learned to appreciate regular timeout on my own. I’m a big fan of the outdoors and one of the best things I’ve done is go on a wilderness trek solo. I travelled 100 kilometres over 5 days, through a wilderness area without seeing another soul. It was an amazing experience.
Going forward, as addition to Sales Made Simple, I have a couple of other projects in mind…….
- I want to help people create vision for their lives. During my own journey, I discovered the secret to creating vision and this was instrumental in helping me turn my own life around – watch this space!
- I want to get increasingly more involved in humanitarian work. During my Sales Career I was lucky enough to work for an International Development Agency called Opportunity International. Part of my job involved taking people to visit slums and poor communities in Indonesia, India and the Philippines. Seeing people living in that level of extreme poverty has inspired me take increasing responsibility in being part of the solution.
I look forward to having you join me on this journey.
Warmest regards
Julian Martin
Sales Made Simple