Sean Morrison is the co-founder of Maxam Capital and has years of investment banking experience. He trained as an accountant, but as a university student he learned to come out of his shell in a weekend sales course for a student painting company.
“What I’ve learned is that basically everything in life and business is sales, to some degree: you’re selling yourself, you’re selling a product, you’re selling a company, you’re selling your ideas in terms of how a deal should come together.”
That first experience was excruciating – worse than cold-calling, he said, trainees had to practise selling to each other face to face.
“They taught you techniques and introductions and how to work your way into a sales pitch, which became quite intuitive to me,” he said. “You don’t really understand sales until you’ve been taught properly.”
He believes that everyone who is interested in business should learn how to sell – even if you’re planning on being a shy accountant. Just like public speaking, some people are naturals, but it’s also a skill that can be learned.
“You also need the tools: how to make the sales pitch, how to follow up, those sorts of things.”
As an investment banker, he now uses his selling skills every day.
“You’re selling the client on how to best position the company,” he said. “When you approach potential buyers you have built a story that makes sense.”
That doesn’t mean he’s not still an accountant at heart: his sales strategy is to craft a pitch bursting with solidly researched facts and figures.
On investment banking for the fashionable set: “Before I started up this company I was an investment banker for Chip Wilson at Lululemon (Nasdaq:LULU) and Brian Hill at Aritzia, so I advised some pretty interesting companies. At the end of the day, being an investment banker is about solving problems, but it’s also selling people on your ideas for those solutions.”
