Sandler Training

Jane was struggling. Most of her deals weren’t moving forward, and her quarterly income target seemed well out of reach.

Jane’s manager Mario sent an email asking her to identify her top three qualified prospects; he also asked Jane to be ready to discuss each prospect with him. For her session with Mario, Jane brought in information on three companies with whom she had scheduled upcoming meetings: Acme, Betterway, and Century.

Juanita, three months into her first sales job, was having problems with her closing numbers. Her ratio was the lowest on the team, and she was far behind her quota for the month. She asked her boss Cliff for help.

Rosita had been behind quota before, but never by this much and never for this long. When her manager, Sam, offered to take her out to lunch, she figured she was either looking at very good news … or very bad news.

“There’s no easy way to say this first part,” Sam said quietly once they were seated at their table, “so I’ll just say it. You’re on probation. You’ve got sixty days to turn things around or we’re letting you go.”

Bad news. Rosita took a deep breath, nodded, and then asked: “OK. Is there a second part?”

“There is,” Sam said, smiling. “Fortunately, it’s a lot easier to talk about. I don’t think any of this is your fault.”

Rosita had no words for a reply. She hadn’t seen that one coming.

One morning Juan, a new sales hire for Acme, Inc., found himself under pressure from his manager, Brad.

“It’s been two months since you joined us,” Brad said briskly. “It’s time for you to step up. This quarter, I need you to set appointments with some new companies we are targeting. Here’s the list. Just schedule 20 new slots for conversations with 20 new people that we haven’t talked to before. Then have those conversations. Do that every month. I don’t care how you generate the appointments. I don’t care what script you use. I want you to push...

Anne is a partner in a small consulting firm. During a recent meeting with a key prospect, a senior decision maker at a Fortune 1000 firm, she handled the presentation. Juan, her mentor and coach (and the founder of the practice) watched and took notes. After the presentation – which ended inconclusively– Juan and Anne did a “parking lot debrief” about what went well and what could have been improved upon during the meeting. As part of that debrief, Juan mentioned that he felt Anne had done a great job of establishing rapport early on, and also of setting a clear agenda for the meeting. Then Juan asked:

“Is there any part of the meeting you would do differently, if you had to do it all over again?”