Roger Barrington

I got into sales when I was around 21. At the time, I was simply looking for an opportunity to make some money.

I answered an advert in Croydon that said: “No experience necessary — full training provided.”

My first role was face-to-face, door-to-door sales with Granton, selling restaurant discount cards and vouchers.

I did not enter sales knowing how to sell. I had to learn. That is exactly where most of the people I work with today are starting from, and it is why our sales training in the UK assumes no previous sales experience.

From those first doors, I moved into residential energy sales, then into npower-related campaigns, where I first progressed into sales management. I worked on an early TalkTalk broadband campaign connected with Carphone Warehouse, spent time in an AXA residential sales environment, and later sold business-to-business on npower campaigns.

Over the years I represented a range of major brands through outsourced direct-sales agencies and campaigns, including npower, TalkTalk, AXA, EDF, Scottish Power and ADT. These were agency-based, outsourced campaign environments rather than direct employment by those brands.

What that gave me was exposure: different products, different customers, different sectors and very different selling environments. Selling energy on a doorstep is not the same as selling business-to-business, and neither is the same as working a phone-based campaign. The fundamentals carry across, but you only learn that by doing all of them.

I also worked across fundraising and direct-sales campaigns for a range of major charitable organisations, including British Red Cross, RSPCA, Save the Children and Action for Blind. Again, that work was delivered through direct-sales campaigns rather than employment by those organisations.

As I developed, I moved into management. I managed teams of approximately 25 to 30 people, and I developed trainee managers and managers. Some of those people later went on to run successful sales offices and sales businesses around the UK.

That was the real change. It stopped being only about whether I could sell. I had to learn how to help other people understand the process, develop their own skills, build consistency and perform for themselves. That is the same work behind our sales team training.

Much of my career was spent in 100% performance-based sales environments. Results mattered. If I didn’t sell, I didn’t earn.

But I also learned very quickly that performance was never just about getting a signature or hitting a number. When you are representing a client face-to-face, how you treat the customer matters just as much as the result.

Poor experiences travel quickly. Being ethical, doing right by the customer and representing the client properly were never optional. I had to learn how to produce consistently while maintaining those standards.

As I moved into management, the challenge changed. It was no longer just about whether I could perform. I had to learn how to pass those skills, standards and behaviours on to other people and help them produce results for themselves.

Over the years I kept meeting salespeople who were working in real sales roles but had gaps in their training. They had been taught scripts, basic objection handling or general motivational advice, but when I asked deeper questions, many had never properly been taught things such as:

• how to manage activity and goals
• how to build rapport deliberately
• how to understand the structure of a sales conversation
• when and why to close
• how to manage rejection and emotion
• how each stage of the sales process connects
• how to identify exactly where their performance is breaking down

I also saw business owners spending money putting salespeople on courses without seeing a meaningful change in consistency or performance.

A lot of that training was not necessarily bad. There is good training out there. My issue was that much of it stayed at the surface. I simply felt there was room for something more practical, more detailed and more grounded in real UK selling environments.

I wanted to build something that helped salespeople understand the mechanics underneath performance: what they are doing, why they are doing it, which part of the sales process they are in, what is working, what needs improving, and how to repeat good performance consistently. That is also the thinking behind our sales coaching approach.

I have listened to a lot of sales content over the years, and much of it is useful. But a large amount of widely available sales training comes from the United States.

The fundamentals of selling can travel across markets, but communication styles, expectations and buying behaviour can differ.

My experience has been built in UK sales environments, so Real World Sales Academy is designed around the conversations, behaviours and challenges salespeople actually face here.

I do not want people memorising lines they do not understand. I want them to understand why something works, when to use it, what the customer may be thinking and what part of the process they are actually in.

My goal is to help people become more aware, more consistent and more capable of correcting their own performance.

• No hype.
• No fake confidence.
• No pressure tactics.
• Understand the process.
• Build repeatable skills.
• Learn how people behave.
• Develop every stage of the conversation.
• Standards over mood.
• Real-world application over classroom theory.

I still enjoy helping people understand the parts of sales that often get missed.

It is not just about teaching someone what to say. It is about helping them understand why they are saying it, what they should be looking for, how to recognise what is happening in the conversation, and how to improve without relying on someone standing over them.