How a Cold Calling Ten-Year-Old Became a Sales Superstar

AN enterprising schoolboy has become an internet sensation after he cracked cold-calling to global sales leaders - thanks to some expert sales coaching.

Joe Beales is only 10, but he’s already mastered the art of sales, booking 11 meetings at his first ever day at work - resulting in over 20 job offers from across the globe and hundreds of thousands of views as a video of him in action went viral.

Joe’s dad, Kevin, is the founder of Newcastle based startup, Refract, a sales coaching platform.

The analytics-driven application analyses the habits and traits of top performers' sales conversations. Kevin wanted to know if Refract could help coach literally anyone - even a inexperienced youngster like Joe.

Refract’s Mark Ackers initially gave him a cheat sheet and script and they did a few role-playing demos to break the ice. Phase two saw Joe making real live calls, and relying on the Refract platform to learn from the calls he made and improve his skills in areas such as speed and talk time.

Kevin says: “It was a huge success. He took on all Mark’s suggestions, pushing through some potential bad habits and difficult conversations, and listening to the insights Refract generated.

“He learned the power of asking questions over making statements, and even found out how to use powerful questioning strategies and by the end of the day he was flying solo and script-free. Some of the people he spoke to didn't even realise he was a child!

“He has lots of confidence, which helps, but it’s really demonstrated the value of the platform in helping people of all levels and experience to boost their sales skills.”

Joe’s cold calling video went viral, gathering 100,000’s of views on LinkedIn and feedback from sales professionals worldwide, who have said the youngster has inspired them to set higher goals for their teams. He’s even had some job offers!

Joe says: “I really enjoyed my day in the office. My dad offered to pay me if I managed to book some meetings and demos so that was a massive incentive! I’m planning to spend my earnings on X-box games.”

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Note to editors:

Refract, a software company headquartered in Newcastle in the UK was founded in 2015 by Kevin Beales, Richard Smith, and Paul Flemming. The cloud based software is used by businesses globally who wish to analyse and improve telephone sales conversations. Clients include Big Yellow Storage, Time Out, Neopost, Creditsafe, and VMWare, https://www.refract.ai

The LinkedIn post for the original video that went viral can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6506814105960083456

The full video of Joe's experience is available here, an embed code for reusing the video can be generated from the within the video player: https://www.refract.ai/blog/coach-the-sale-ep07-coaching-a-10yr-old