Marcus Cauchi - the £90,000 a month Sandler Franchisee
Having invoiced £90,000 in one month, Sandler Sales Institute franchisee Marcus Cauchi has proved that white collar franchising can really pay off. Marcus Cauchi, a Sandler franchisee for three years, has just completed an incredible spell where he has closed 67 qualified prospects in a row, culminating in his best month ever where he billed his clients an astonishing £90,000 in one month for sales training.
Many high fliers dream of leaving corporate life and running their own business with a white collar franchise but they fear taking a drop in salary. Others are scared of the uncertainty and isolation of self-employment.
Marcus, 40, says: 'One of my clients is the CEO of a Japanese bank. Thirty minutes after meeting him, I’d completed a £36,000 deal. They’re paying me £1,000 an hour to train him and his fixed income securities sales team.'
‘Anyone who wants to get into the franchise should work out their hourly minimum and compare it to that. £1,000 an hour is my minimum fee now for corporates and I can charge more than £30,000 a day.’
Marcus Cauchi has 20 small to medium, and a few large, companies on his books and he helps their directors and sales staff grow their businesses. Typically they invited him in because they lacked certainty. They struggled to get decisions, salespeople wasted time and resources on non-prospects, they gave free consulting and found they were stuck in bids and tenders controlled by the buyer.
A top-five search engine optimisation company also pays him around £12,000 a month to train its chief executive, two managing directors and its sales team. And a top-l0 multinational retail and commercial bank hires him to improve its cold calling and close rates.
He says: ‘These firms made their money back in the first three sessions by landing contracts worth a lot more than they are paying me. They also recover their costs by disqualifying timewasters almost immediately instead of six months into a costly sales cycle.’ Marcus became a franchisee of the Sandler Sales Institute lust over three years ago. ‘I got into this because I’d been in direct sales for 17 years and I sold every product and service you can imagine — water filters, media sales and recruitment and telemarketing, software and consultancy’
Marcus was made redundant along with everyone else from a software company just before Christmas. But his old finance director invited Marcus to work on contract-generating sales leads at his new company.
He says: ‘On day one in my new job the marketing manager said: “We’ve just been on this brilliant sales training program and you should have a look at these books and listen to these CDs”. Arrogant oaf that I was, I put them in my in-tray for five months. This is my only regret in life. Eventually I took them home and in 15 minutes I had 10 road-to-Damascus moments. I cried. It was like being winded 10 times in a row.
‘I started using the Sandler system and my sales went down for the first two weeks. When you’re learning something new they always do. Then they started climbing up and within three months I went from a close rate of one in 10 to closing two deals in every three. I realized that if I can teach this, I can sell anything to anyone. That’s when I approached Sandler about buying the franchise.’
In September 2004, Marcus opened the first London franchise for the Sandler Sales Institute. ‘It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. The 17 years of constant screw-ups and failures make me good at what I do because there’s almost nothing my audience throws at me that I haven’t failed at myself.’
Marcus believes too many people go into franchising without having the selling skills necessary to grow their business. He says: ‘All franchisees or people who setup in business for themselves, with the possible exception of McDonald’s, are buying a sales job. Most people think that because it’s a franchise, business will suddenly and miraculously appear. Hell, are they in for a rude awakening!’
‘The beauty of a franchise operation is that you have a repeatable system with a structure and valuable intellectual property in place, so you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. But know this: selling isn’t an option, it’s a must.’
