What I Learned Working For British Gas

"If they've already got gas you've got a chance I guess."

My dad said that.

It was 2007. I had worked for Safestyle (will do another article on that in future... some experience...) and Fitness First where at one point I worked 14 days in a row to get the most sales. This was my third sales job.

I knew one guy called Richard Boylan who was a chessplayer who worked for British Gas. He had a nice car.

British Gas, aka Centrica, where far bigger than those companies though. I didn't know a lot about gas and electricity before I started... I knew a lot by the end.

So you were given sheets of paper stapled together and sent out to get sales. The sheets had letters by them- y for yes and n for no. A lot of people had gas with British Gas... but then a lot of them didn't have electricity. Some didn't have gas or electricity... this was called a dual fuel...

So I had a week shadowing other salesmen then on the Friday of that week I was sent half a day out on my own...

I took practically no days off. I didn't sell that many at the start. One day I talked to another young salesman... saying to him how I focused quite a lot on houses which had British Gas for gas... current customers should be easier to sell to right?

He said how he focused a lot on those who didn't have either. If they'd changed before they could change again. Plus it was 2 units, not 1.

Later that day I walked up to one house who practically rolled out the red carpet for me to switch her back to British Gas to both... she hated her current supplier.

I started getting more sales gradually.

British Gas actually cared about its salespeople. When you had a day's holiday they gave you average commission for that day. When the company put the prices up and people cancelled they still paid you for the sale. At first we were paid weekly, it turned to monthly later.

My best sales week was 47 units. It was 2008. British Gas had put the prices up, but then the other companies did too. There was a fixed price tariff which worked well. Unlike some other sales companies over a fairly low threshold British Gas paid for every sale- sometimes £20 per unit or more.

6 days a week selling that tariff... house to house. In my British Gas uniform, knowing the product knowledge. It was September 2008 and the weather was decent...

So what did I learn?

Hard work and doing lots of days is essential in sales. There were some people in my team even back then earning at least £60,000 a year selling gas and electricity. I was told that the best in the UK made over £100,000 doing it...

Brand is important. Everyone knew who British Gas was. You can have the best product in the world, but if people don't know or believe in your product you will not sell.

The more you do sales the more product knowledge you learn which is important. I knew a lot about the competition by the end- I worked for SSE and Npower later.

So yeah... lot more I could say and may do later.

I am available for interesting sales jobs now!