Phil M. Jones has made it his life’s work to demystify the sales process and reframe what it means to “sell”. He is the author of five international best-selling books, and the youngest ever winner of coveted “British Excellence in Sales and Marketing Award”.

What is selling?

Selling isn't embellishing a product or a service with features and benefits so somebody gets it. What selling is, is earning the right to make your recommendation, and putting yourself in a position that you can say things like it's because of the fact that you said X, Y and Z, for those reasons, what we recommend is A, B and C.

So you were taking business more serious than school - even at the age of 15?

I was invited in by my teachers questioning my attendance, and I would respond to them with a question. The question I would respond with was, “how much money are you making sir?” And my school teachers would refuse to tell me at the time, but at 15 years of age, I was earning the equivalent of around $4,000 a month from my little car cleaning business.

What is the name of your new book?

The book is called Exactly What to Say, but what the important thing in that is, not that you should say exactly what I tell you to say, but what you should be thinking is, well the worst time to think about the thing you're going to say is in the moment that you're saying it, and that quite often you find yourself in repetitive conversations, where you're saying the same thing, and same thing, and the same thing because the moment someone saying.

What would be a short takeaway for the listeners?

 If somebody else can do it - can that somebody else be me?