Process

Join us for an enlightening episode as Josh Shirley delves into the intricacies of selling SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions. Josh emphasizes the nuances of selling SaaS, highlighting the crucial differences from selling tangible products or services. 

This week, we have an insightful conversation with Hannah Ajikawo as we explore the fundamental stages of awareness, consideration, decision, and post-purchase, shedding light on the complexities beyond the traditional "funnel" analogy.

We’re all taught at some point that we need to ask for a Call to Action (CTA)– a request that the person we’re talking to commit to do something. And usually, we make that request. But how effectively?

Join us on the latest How to Succeed podcast as we dive into the ever-evolving world of AI and sales with Jordan Ledwein.

Emily Reggia, Sandler's enterprise marketing manager, joins us at Inbound to share her expertise and insights on keeping the customer at the heart of our business.

Sandler has been driving the conversation around sales intelligence this year to provide insights into how AI can revolutionize sales techniques, boost efficiency, and reshape the future.

Leaders can think of these areas as four pillars—four critical supports that the most effective sales leaders take full advantage of. Building a team without taking advantage of all four pillars can be a devastating strategic mistake.

In this episode, we sit down with Jennifer Smith, CEO and founder of Scribe, an automatic process documentation software. We discuss how people should go beyond simply looking at revenue when tracking sales success and instead focus on three levels.

There are four predictable steps that impact all major purchase decisions. Do you know what they are?

This article’s title is intended as the highest possible compliment. If you’re a sales leader, and your team is producing, I really do believe that’s because of your ability to do what an air traffic controller does.

The goal of creating a better buying experience is to make it easier for people to buy. In this podcast, we will discuss the importance of follow-up after an initial discovery call or demo, and how sales reps can use tools like Qwilr to progress conversations.

The sales process has changed significantly in recent years. Prospects are now much more informed about their options and the buying process than they used to be, so salespeople must adapt their approach accordingly.

With deals won reaching 51%, the highest recorded rate as reported by the 2022 Sales Performance Scorecard by Sales Mastery, it is clear many organizations are tapping into a secret weapon in performance improvement. So, wherein lies the secret? Sales Mastery researchers Barry Trailer and Jim Dickie determine several strategies to improve your probability of winning by meeting challenges head-on with a formal approach.

Joe Ippolito joins to talk about the Upfront Contract.

Here are three simple things you can do, starting today, that will immediately upgrade your 30-second commercial.

The Sandler Summit is a powerful two-day hybrid event where successful business professionals across all industries learn, collaborate, and network.

The referral generation process we are about to share with you can transform your month, your quarter, your year, and your career. It should be at or near the heart of your prospecting plan. Learn it! Practice it! Use it! Share it with your organization! 

You may not realize it, but your team’s CRM can help you to overcome the “winging it” problem, standardize your team’s sales process, speed up sales cycles, improve close ratios, and increase revenue.

High performance sales teams we work with are adopting a hybrid selling approach to leverage the best practices of both in-person and virtual selling.

Mike Montague interviews Hamish Knox on How to Succeed at Trials and Demos.

In an enterprise sale, where there are lots of moving parts, things can get complicated. Here are four best practices we share with our clients.

There is clearly a limited supply of raw materials and finished goods around the world at the moment.

“Please just send me a better proposal, and when you do, give me your bottom line. I don’t have time to go back and forth. Just get me your best number.”

George Carlin did a bit once about words that included the phrase, “it’s the context that makes them good or bad.” The bit *hasn’t* aged well, but his words are prescient when it comes to techniques learned in training.

Mike Montague interviews Rachel Shi, Senior Manager of Partnerships at Vidyard, on How to Succeed at Video Selling. 

Will we eventually be able to return to the pre-pandemic ways of conducting business? That’s a question that’s been on the minds of many professionals.

You don’t need us to tell you that we’re all working from a distance these days. Thanks to COVID, professional salespeople are, for the most part, not seeing buyers in person.

Mike Montague interviews James Abraham on How to Succeed at Neuro Selling.

Remember the childhood game of whispering a phrase to someone and asking them to pass it on? By the time it reached the fourth or fifth person, the meaning of the original phrase was lost! Then, it amused us; in customer care, it can be costly.

Mike Montague interviews Jason Campbell, Host of Impact at Work and Superhumans at Work, a Mindvalley Podcast. Author of Upcoming book on Selling with Love, on How to Succeed at Selling with Love

Mike Montague interviews Anneli Thomson, Sandler trainer and member of Team Great Britain in the triathlon, on How to Succeed at Gold Medal Selling. 

Mike Montague interviews Dr. Mark Goulston, podcaster, speaker, and author of Just Listen, on How to Succeed at Selling More by Listening More.

The old distinction between “field sales” and “inside sales” is an increasingly irrelevant one. Today, the most effective and productive sales teams see themselves as remote sales professionals.

We live in an era when virtual selling has, in many industries, all but eclipsed face-to-face, in-person selling.

For as long as there have been salespeople, there has been data to analyze about the process they use to bring in business.

The results of the Sandler Research Center survey The Essential Components for Sustaining Overachieving Sales Performance are out.

This year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the book, Dave will revisit each of the original 49 Sandler Rules and give updated takes on their relevance to salespeople and sales leaders.

Mike Montague interviews Rich Isaac on How to Succeed at Understanding the Decision Making Process.

Back in the 1930s, in the wake of the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression, there was a social phenomenon in the United States known as the “Hoover Garden,” sometimes called a “Depression Garden.”

David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training and 6-time Author, talks about his Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best-selling book, The Sandler Rules: 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them.

Mike Montague interviews Hamish Knox on How to Succeed When the Sale Goes Sideways.

This year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the book, Dave will revisit each of the original 49 Sandler Rules and give updated takes on their relevance to salespeople and sales leaders.

Mike Montague interviews Doug Cohen on How to Succeed at Using Body Language in the Sales Process. 

The STORY:
Bob finished the presentation, turned off the overhead projector, and turned up the lights. The prospect was broadly smiling. Bob knew this one was a done deal. Piece of cake, he thought.

Over the years, we’ve worked with a lot of fantastic and skilled salespeople who really work at their craft.

How do your prospects feel after sitting across from you in a sales call?  Maybe the answer doesn’t come instantly to you. That’s OK. Here’s another question: Ever been to therapy? Don’t worry, it’s a rhetorical question… but it’s OK if you have. A career in sales can certainly lead to an occasional need for a therapist! 

The STORY:
Nick was climbing the wall because he could not figure out how to close the prospect. The prospect had spent the last hour with Nick and appeared to want to buy. But he didn’t know what to do. If only he could remember what the experienced salespeople had told him to do.

Mike Montague interviews David Brown on How to Succeed with the Sales Software of the Future.

Thanks to the global pandemic, salespeople across the country and around the world are now coming to terms with a sobering reality.

There’s been a lot of interest in recent months in the topic of sales enablement. What is it? Why does it matter? How does it work? And how can it benefit your organization?

The STORY:
After making the best possible presentation and after spending most of the night before preparing an extensive written proposal, Tim waited with bated breath for the prospect to say “yes.” The silence in the office was broken only by the prospect leafing through the written proposal. Tim was tied in knots.

In the complex world of enterprise accounts, team selling is the name of the game. When it comes to winning, selling to, growing, and serving major accounts, team selling needs to be much more than just a tag line. It needs to be the way you do business.

The real question here is how an effective retail salesperson can have better conversations while reducing pressure. How do we make that happen in retail?

In today’s world, artificial intelligence (AI) is getting more powerful and more prominent in the sales process. What does that mean for professional salespeople? There used to be an occupation called “switchboard operator” – now there isn’t. Fifty years from now, will there no longer be an occupation called “professional salesperson”?

The STORY:
The appointment with the prospect that Tim spent two weeks getting was not going well. The prospect kept firing questions and Tim kept giving answers. The only problem was that Tim could not figure out if the answers were what the prospect wanted to hear.

Carlos was in a great mood. Forty minutes in, the meeting with his top prospect’s senior staff was going great. He was getting nothing but engagement, smiles, and positive body language from everyone around the table, including the CEO of the company. He knew what that meant. He was about to close his first big deal! The timing couldn’t have been better. Because this was a potentially major account, Carlos' manager Charlene was in attendance. Today, she would get to see him work his magic first hand.

Brian Sullivan interviews Oksana Esberard about Mindfulness in Selling.

The STORY:
I think of my first sales training course. A week before the course was to begin, our instructor had sent us a book that listed the 100 most common objections and the best 100 ways to overcome them. Being used to educational seminars, I assumed we would talk about them. Have a conversation. Discussion groups. That sort of thing. Was I in for a surprise.

Hope, the saying goes, is not a strategy. Wise words! But are you perhaps relying on hope a bit too much after you and your team lose a major account?

Once upon a time, there was a young kid who graduated from high school, took a look at the help wanted ads, went out on a couple of interviews, and, within just a few days, landed his very first job. He was hired as a salesperson by one of those big box stores.

Have you ever wondered why a once-promising new hire is performing far below your initial expectations? From one perspective, what’s happening here is pretty simple: the person you hired is not the person you interviewed. The dynamic at work in an interview situation is similar to the dynamic at work on a first date./blog/how-succeed-onboarding-new-hires-podcast

Mike Montague interviews Haley Haggerty on How to Succeed at Rethinking the Sales Profession.

The STORY:
“I really can’t say that what you’ve shown me, Bob, does anything for me,” stated the prospect. “In fact,” he went on, “your choice of colors is nowhere as extensive as your competitor’s, who was just in here this morning by the way.”

Mike Montague interviews Jurgen Strauss, marketing innovator and host of the Innovabuzz podcast, on How to Succeed at Marketing to Your Ideal Client In this episode:

Give our podcast a listen to learn the right steps you need to take in order to create a sales playbook for your team.

Tim was convinced that if only he could somehow get in front of more prospects, he’d do a lot better. But it was always tough to get anyone to agree to an appointment. He started collecting all the excuses.

Tom’s best customer, Meg, called and asked for a favor: “Can you talk to my new assistant Karen about getting up to speed with your software? She’s got a couple of questions that I don’t have time to answer.”

Mike Montague interviews Doug Cohen on How to Succeed at The First 30 Seconds of a Prospecting Call. 

Mike Montague interviews Wayne Dehn on How to Succeed at Overcoming Childhood Messages.

The STORY:

Bob was preparing for his first appointment with Mr. Smerthing, senior partner of the law firm Smerthing, Pennyworth, Jones, Riccardo and Blarney, one of the biggest, oldest, and most prestigious firms in the state.

Mike Montague interviews Dan Stalp on how to succeed at redirecting prospects’ head trash. 

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of top performers in sales is the ability to avoid two common, self-imposed mental handicaps: reachback and afterburn.

In his book Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell contends that people make their best and most accurate decisions in the first two seconds of facing a situation—in other words, in the blink of an eye. It seems inherently suspect, though, this notion that people can make correct decisions quickly. Is it? You were probably taught from an early age that haste makes waste; don’t judge a book by its cover; and look before you leap.

STORY:
The prospect looked up at the ceiling and said to Tim, “I was just trying to figure out how I would best use your product.”

Mike Montague interviews Nema Semnani on how to succeed at storytelling. In this episode:

• The right attitude for effective storytelling
• Imagined realities are powerful motivators
• How to tell a compelling story

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Mike Montague interviews Carlos Garrido on How to Succeed at Asking for Referrals In this episode:

• Why do we struggle to ask for referrals?
• Attitudes to help you get business from referrals
• Give referrals to get referrals

Selling to major accounts, also known as enterprise accounts, is radically different from selling in other spaces. For one thing, the major account selling cycle is a continuous process – continuous because there’s no end to the cycle of selling to and serving large accounts. And the streams of transactions over time between buying and selling organizations constitute a client journey with a distinctive itinerary along a clear roadmap, a roadmap that delivers value on an ongoing basis.

Here are five simple ways we can improve the quality of our communication with the people who are currently buying from us and expand and deepen those relationships over time.

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We know all about the importance of team selling, don’t we? It's that powerful strategy in which multiple team members from different functional areas of a selling organization work collaboratively to win deals. Especially in the enterprise world, team selling is widely implemented.

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An interview with Chris O’Connel on How to Succeed in Starting Out in Sales.

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In sales, we all bundle our accounts, clients and prospects, into logical groupings to add clarity and understanding to our efforts. We use vertical categories, assembling together our healthcare, consumer products, technology accounts, and others. We also differentiate by geography, adding efficiency in territory management by bundling accounts based on physical locations. 

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In selling to and serving major accounts, team selling is one of the most powerful, and underutilized, competitive advantages. Effectively mobilizing your organization’s most precious assets, its people, often makes the difference between success or failure in large deals. 

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Watch Andrew Wall conduct a full prospect meeting using Sandler techniques and questioning strategies to uncover the prospects buying motivations.

As a sales trainer, I get a lot of pushback about the word “pain.” Many of my clients reason that there are many other motives to explain why people buy. There have been multiple instances where they were offended by the very word “pain” and its negative connotation and then asked if we can call it something else instead. 

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Landing the right enterprise account is a big achievement, with new revenue and healthy margins being two obvious things to celebrate. But unlike smaller account wins, the real significance of the victory is the huge potential for growth over time.

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Vincent’s closing numbers were not what he had been hoping for. He asked his manager, Lynnette, what she thought the problem might be. After a little role-playing, Lynnette suggested that Vincent was spending too much time selling “from inside a box.”

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 11 MInutes

Neapolitan ice cream was first created in the nineteenth century by the Italians. What they had come to realize was that if they used a combination of ice creams, they would have more people buy their product because their customers enjoyed getting a little bit of everything.

We at Sandler Training have the B-A-T triangle of success, which stands for behavior, attitude and technique. We often ask sales professionals and business leaders what is the most important one out of the three. The most common answer we get is attitude. Although that is a key aspect to the success formula it isn’t the most important.

Discover some of the stumbling blocks when selling to homeowners.

Don’t surprise prospects. This is one of the most important rules in Sandler Training. It is such a simple idea, just not easy.

Do your prospecting calls stand out from the competition or do they sound like stereotypical cold calls?

Stan was frustrated. He kept getting “shot down on price” during discussions with prospective buyers. He knew he was supposed to talk directly about money issues before making a presentation . . . but somehow he never seemed to iron out the details in a way that gave him a clear sense of whether the buyer felt his pricing was acceptable.

How effective are you at distinguishing your company from those you are competing against in the marketplace? Here's a quick reality check. Suppose you were talking to your number one prospect. And suppose that person looked you in the eye and asked you, "Why should I buy from you?" What would you say?

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Discover what motivates your team and use it to set them up for success.

If you are a leader in your organization, it’s a pretty good bet that you count on the members of, say, your accounting team to use the same terms and the same methodologies when they are collaborating to complete their work. For instance: You assume that when one person on the accounting team refers to the “cost of goods sold,” they mean the same thing as everyone else on the accounting team.

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“Hi, we have decided to go in another direction.”

Have any of you ever experienced something like this? They are not fun emails to get are they?

Trials and demos can be an important part of your sales cycle, especially in the enterprise space. Another term for a trial or demo, is the “Monkey’s Paw,” which is a small version of your larger service or a consulting project. A successful Monkey’s Paw has three components, which are similar to a successful trial.

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Most salespeople who need to prospect for a living will tell you that it’s a very proactive, immediate results-driven exercise that can be uncomfortable at times. Hard to disagree with that. This is a topic that we get involved with far too often as it’s a common point of frustration for many business owners and sales leaders regarding their selling culture.

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Marina was having some problems with the opening phases of her sales process. Her early discussions with prospects were rarely productive. She sat down with Fred, her manager, and did some role-playing in the hope of improving her interviewing technique. During the role-play session, Fred shared a strategy Marina hadn't heard of. He called it “stripping line.”

Many sales professionals we work struggle with the question of how to leverage social networking platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter into their business development plan. Here are twelve simple steps you can take that will make it easier for you to launch and sustain mutually beneficial social connections online.

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Potential buyers of your product or service – like the rest of us – spend a lot of their time online. This gives rise to a question: What are the best ways to engage with them when a voice to voice or a face to face conversation isn’t a possibility? Here are five simple, effective steps you can follow.

Jane, a new sales hire, was settling into her workspace on Friday morning, all ready to celebrate the first quarter in which she’d been able to exceed her revenue target . . . when she got a voicemail message that made her stomach churn.

Are you wasting a lot of time and money because you aren't asking the right questions to qualify prospects?

Diane, a recent sales hire, got an email from her manager, Luis, suggesting that he accompany her on an initial sales call with a prospect – and then debrief with her on what he’d observed. Diane replied that she thought that was a great idea.

The 2019 Sandler Summit, which took place at the Rosen Centre in Orlando, Florida, was the best-attended Summit yet, both in-person and online. We covered a lot of ground, but I’d like to share with you two takeaways, in particular, from this year’s Summit.

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The hot labor market is stressing hiring managers and their organizations like no other job cycle in the last 20 years. Despite the mounting pressure of filling an open role, organizations that remain true to their hiring standards will win in the long term.

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David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training and 6-Time Best-Selling Author, talks about his fifth book, Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders. The book is on sale here.

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STORY:
I’m reminded of a story about a salesperson in a furniture store helping a young couple look for a dining room set. After the couple picked out the set that they loved, and the salesperson had checked and confirmed that it was in stock, and the order form had been written, the salesperson decided to show the young couple how easily the drawers opened and closed on the buffet.

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 9 Minutes

This strategy involves face-to-face contact with people you already know, and thus isn’t technically an example of digital prospecting. Even so, it’s a best practice we use and have coached others to use as a means of generating substantially larger numbers of referrals via LinkedIn.

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This is a truly amazing period of history for sales professionals. The information tools that help us to identify, connect with, and sustain ongoing relationships with buyers are more powerful than ever, and they allow us to do things few could have imagined just a few years ago. But there's a challenge we all face: We mustn't let the extraordinary technology we now have blind us to the importance of having a clear sales process.

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Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer from Calgary and two-time author, shows you how to succeed at overcoming common objections in the negotiation process with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world for overcoming these common negotiating tactics.

Listen Time: 21 Minutes

Eliza, a new sales hire, had posted an abysmally low closing ratio in her first 60 days on the job. She was spending most of her time with prospects who ended up picking her brain for advice and information . . . and then disappearing. Frank, her manager, asked her during a coaching session why she thought that was happening.

Let’s start by talking about the elephant in the room: Cold calling is almost every salesperson’s least favorite topic. In fact, the only two groups who like the idea of cold calling are those who have never done it and sales managers.

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What is the ideal mix of daily and weekly activities – the mix that best supports our income goals? We should know. If we have a personalized daily “recipe” for daily and weekly progress toward key activity benchmarks, also known as cookbook or a behavioral plan, we can identify exactly how many dials we need to make, how many conversations we need to have, how many referrals we need to ask for, and so on… every single working day.

In a previous post, I looked at changes on the horizon for salespeople in 2019. Now it’s time to look at the changes faced by sales leaders. 

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Many women ask me about the best ways to break down the barriers faced by female sales professionals. Here’s my answer: the critical step is recognizing that how we perceive ourselves before, during, and after our sales conversations will always have the most dramatic impact on our ability to break down the barriers we encounter. 

As a Sandler Sales Trainer and Sales Professional, I get asked all the time how do we keep our great clients and expand business with them?
The answer is using the RECONR activity.

Dave Mattson is back to talk to leaders and managers about onboarding. What is your plan for getting new sales up to speed and how do you know if things are going according to plan? Find out in this special selling the sandler way episode from our CEO.

Think about your last purchase, why did you make the purchase?  Perhaps the first things that come to mind are, "It was on sale, so you saved money," "it will allow you to get things done faster," or possibly "it will improve your health.”  These are logical reasons.  The reality is these are not the reasons you bought, it is how you justify the purchase.

Learn how to close the sale or close the file with John Rosso and Mike Montague. 

Are your sales presentations more like a Gettysburg Address or a Gettysburg Oration? Few people know that President Lincoln was actually the secondary speaker at Gettysburg. The program for the dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, four months after the famous 1863 battle, listed Dedicatory Remarks, by the President of the United States after Oration, by Hon. Edward Everett, the main speaker. 

David Mattson, President  and  CEO of Sandler Training, shares a quick audio blog about touch calls. How do you keep in touch and check in with your prospects and clients?

Sharlene Douthit, Sandler trainer from New York City, returns to talk about building rapport with clients and prospects. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of top salespeople, and learn how to incorporate them into your next sales call. 

According to research done by AYTM, over 60% of business professionals will take a summer vacation. At any given moment this summer, a third of your prospects and customers may be away from work. That can make it difficult to keep sales numbers up – and yourself or your team motivated. This summer, you can use these social selling tips to avoid a summer slump.

Sandler trainers and new authors, Marcus Cauchi and David Davies, join us to talk about selling through retails, distributors, reps, and other third parties. Whether you are currently using other channels to sell your products or services or you are exploring new channels, you should listen to these two experts and read their new Sandler book.

Dave Mattson does another Selling the Sandler Way audio tip. This time he shares his thoughts and secrets to dealing with price concessions and other negotiation tactics from buyers during the sales process. Learn how to succeed at negotiating concessions to your proposal.

As a Sandler Sales Trainer and Sales Professional myself, I get asked all the time, how do I run more effective meetings and end with Specific Next Steps.

The answer is to Start the Meeting Better using an Up-Front Contract.

Jeff Schaffner, Senior Business Developer at Acro Media Inc and host of the Exploring Ecommerce podcast joins Mike Montague to talk about how to succeed at ecommerce. Is digital disruption threatening your business model? Learn how to lean into and succeed in ecommerce with the creators of Sandler.com and our online shop

In partnership with Evernote, the app that keeps your notes organized and syncs your memos so they're searchable and accessible anywhere, Dave Mattson, Sandler CEO and President, participated recently in a special podcast.

Sean Coyle, Sandler trainer, prospecting expert, and David H Sandler Award winner talks about how to lower defensive walls and build rapport quickly in a sales call. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of master salespeople and prospectors who can quickly and easily build trust with their prospects.

Brandon Bruce, Co-Founder of Cirrus Insight, joins the podcast to talk about the modern seller. How do you leverage technology and data to become a better seller?

In this special retro-edition, we go back to the early 1990's with David H Sandler as he explains the Salesperson's Bill of Rights. David Sandler knew the sales profession needed a self-esteem boost and he gave us the path to figure it out for ourselves. Listen in as Sandle challenges you get what is rightfully yours.

Prospecting is the lifeblood of a successful sales career... but many salespeople overlook the basic behaviors that support a consistent prospecting routine. Here are the five necessary behaviors professional salespeople need in order to become successful at prospecting.

 Learn how to get commitments and be strong throughout the sales process, not just at the end. John Rosso, author of Prospect the Sandler Way, talks about how to avoid sales calls that go nowhere or the dreaded think-it-over at the end.

Learning how to communicate more effectively with people who have different communication styles than you do will lead you to more prospects, more productive discussions, and more sales.

Have you noticed? Temperatures are rising, which means summer is about to make its big entrance. For most of us, that’s entirely good news, because summertime means things like vacations, cookouts, and maybe even some time at the beach with a good book. For salespeople, though, the advent of summer is likely to be a bittersweet development, one that leads to an unnecessary drop in annual income… because of the Myth of the Eleventh Commandment.

Learn how to bring up the subject of money and break through the baggage around it. Whether there is tension in you or the prospect, bringing up the budget can raise some uncomfortable feelings. Lauren Valentine will help you learn how to think and talk about money in an adult manner to help you succeed in sales.

Learn how to find the science and systems in the soft skills of selling. Karl Schaphorst discusses the latest and best practices for the sales profession. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques behind the science of selling. 

We’re sometimes asked what the bare minimum should be in terms of digital prospecting ability for an individual salesperson. Below, our list of five things we believe every salesperson, operating in any industry, should be able to do in terms of digital prospecting. If for some reason you can’t do this much right now, you should learn how, and sooner rather than later!

Learn how to hold salespeople accountable for their behaviors. Whether it is yourself or your sales team, Hamish Knox and Haley Ayraud will help you learn the best practices for sales accountability and building new habits.

Learn how to measure and properly quantify your prospecting efforts with Sean Coyle, one of Sandler's top prospecting experts. Sean makes thousands of outbound dials each week with the help of ConnectandSell and he knows how to make each one count. Listen in as he discusses prospecting best practices with Dave Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training.

Inside salespeople who find themselves behind quota may assign their performance problems to any number of factors beyond their control: the economy, the competition, the weather. But the reality is that the single most common reason for this problem lies in something they do control: their choice to use, or not to use, a cookbook.

“In the dark of the night, every cat’s a leopard.” This old Indian saying provides great insight into enterprise selling, because it reminds us how important it is to identify the information that matters most about our key competitors… We must know them, prioritize them, and account for them. That means conducting a truly effective, and customized, competitive analysis. Unfortunately, most research sales teams do in this area falls far short of the mark.

Todd finally learned that he had lost the large deal. He was confused and thought his demo had gone well.  A month had passed since he was told by the prospect that he had “done a good job presenting his software!”  What could have gone wrong?

There are numerous components which determining a seller’s success. Near the top of this contributing-factor totem pole, is behavior. If an individual cannot execute proper behavior, they will struggle to find high levels of achievement. Behavior, the action we take towards our goals, is the blueprint for success in the sales world. Following through on these plans, however, is easier said than done. A large contingent of the salespeople routinely makes the three mistakes listed below. 

Matt Rister, Sandler trainer, talks to Dave Mattson about the ins and outs of the HVAC industry. Matt has experience in the industry and talks about how to succeed at selling the Sandler way in heating and air.

Today’s sales professionals find themselves facing unprecedented, and often uncomfortable, change. More and more salespeople have larger territories than they used to have, and are responsible for selling a wider range of products and services than they’ve ever sold. They've got a lot to do, and they usually have less time in which to do it than they had last year.

In this special bonus episode, Dave Mattson talks about a common problem with sales presentations. If you wait until the end of the presentation to close, you put too much pressure on you and the prospect. Learn how to prevent this pressure and succeed at giving sales presentations.

Pete Oliver and Dave Mattson talk about executing the Sandler budget step and how to talk about money on the sales call. This Selling the Sandler Way episode is all about how to break our bad budget habits, and effectively talk about money in the right way at the right time of the sales process.

The Sandler Enterprise Selling (SES) program, based on David Sandler’s revolutionary selling system, organizes the enterprise selling cycle around a six-stage, continuous process. SES provides a number of special tools throughout its six stages to help organizations land, keep and grow long-term clients, and we’ve added a tool to the SES arsenal – the Quarterly Value Review, or QVR.

If your goal is to find more prospects, get more and better referrals, and make more commission dollars in 2018 than you did in 2017, consider upping your social selling game. Here are four quick tips that will help you to avoid some common mistakes online.

Tim Roberts, Sandler trainer from Indianapolis, joins Dave Mattson to talk about how to find and collect verifiable proof of your prospects needs, budget, and decision-making process throughout the sales cycle.

Dave Mattson, CEO of Sandler Training, talks to Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer and two-time author of Accountability the Sandler Way and Change the Sandler Way, about working through the decision timeline with a prospect. You will learn why decision is a part of the qualification process with a client and what you can do about it.

This article discusses concepts and strategies from our No Guts, No Gain assertiveness program. This self-study program was designed from David Sandler’s teachings on goal-setting, getting tough, and avoiding game and powerplays.

Every salesperson dreams of getting good leads. But what are you supposed to do when you get one?

When prospects ask you a question (or use wishy-washy words, or try to mislead you, or use smokescreen tactics), wouldn’t it be nice if you knew for sure what their true intention was? David Sandler developed a tool to help the salesperson accomplish exactly this. It’s called reversing.

Paul Lanigan from Sandler in Dublin, Ireland share the dangers of social selling and how to find success. Learn the difference between social marketing, social networking, social prospecting, and social selling. Find social selling success with these tips and tricks for maximizing your social media.

1) If your 30-Second Commercial doesn’t answer a prospect’s “What’s in it for me?” question, there will be nothing in it for you!

While many salespeople put forth great effort into mastering the art of presenting, a few key myths can hold people back from closing the sale. Below I’ve identified three common misconceptions about sales presentations and how to avoid them in order to close more business.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

You’re a salesperson. You’ve just checked the wall calendar. You realize that the third quarter is officially over. A chill runs down your spine, because you know this means that you are 75% through the year and you haven't yet come close to the track you need to be on to achieve your yearly goals.

Rule number 29, don't chase purple squirrels. Stay focused and stick to the agenda during sales meetings. People are pretty predictable and purple squirrels are defined as things that they throw onto a meeting that has nothing to do with the topic. 

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

Greg Nanigian, Sandler Trainer and Author, wrote his first book, Why People Buy. It’s a must-read for any sales professional in your organization who isn’t in control of the customers’ buying process, is unsure of what motivates clients and prospects, or needs to enhance their chances of closing the deal.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

The FBI distinguish between two different types of situations requiring two different questioning strategies: the interview and the interrogation. The FBI calls the interview, “a conversation with purpose.” On the other hand, an interrogation is defined as “eliciting a confession against self-interest.” Many salespeople approach a sales interview like they would an interrogation—and this is their first mistake. 

Antonio Garrido, Sandler trainer, and new author of Asking Questions the Sandler Way joins us to talk about the best sales questions. You will learn his favorite questions, the right attitude for asking questions, and why you should be asking more and better questions in the first place.

Lauren Valentine, a Sandler trainer from Albany, talks about her best practices for shortening your sales cycle and closing deals faster. Whether you are looking for a one-call close or have a long cycle that needs to be quicker, Lauren shares her attitudes, behaviors, and techniques for moving deals through the pipeline quickly.

Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way, with your host Dave Mattson, the president and CEO of Sandler Training. He is a five-time bestselling author, speaker, trainer, and consultant to hundreds of international organizations. In this show, he talks to other Sandler trainers about the Sandler selling system.

In this episode of Selling the Sandler Way, Dave Mattson, the President and CEO of Sandler Training explores the Sandler Selling Philosophies behind the Sandler Selling System with Chuck Polin, a Sandler Trainer.

Matt Pletzer, a Sandler Trainer, shares his best practices for selling something new that no one has ever heard of. Sure, we would all love to be Apple and have people talking about us all the time, and people lined up to buy our new products. Unfortunately, most salespeople have to try to open doors and new markets when the prospects have never heard of you. In this episode, Matt talks about the attitude, behavior, and technique of doing just that.

In this episode of Selling the Sandler Way, Dave Mattson, the President and CEO of Sandler Training explores the Sandler Selling Philosophies behind the Sandler Selling System with Rich Isaac, a Sandler Trainer.

I taught the subject of “Personal Selling” as an adjunct professor at Loyola University Maryland for twelve years. The academic-industrial complex required the use of a textbook in class, and occasionally, I used it, often to point out the crazy ideas that Ph.D.’s who write textbooks have about the business world.

Rule #9: Don't get smoked in the interview. Search for the right candidate. What's don't get smoked in the interview mean? Well, sometimes the best sales call that a salesperson would make is on you, during the interview.   

Today we're talking about the top sales challenges that we face as individual sales producers. We have different types of people who listen to the show. Certainly short selling cycles, long selling cycles, transactional consultative. It's all over the board. Some do sales and service and some just do sales. At the end of the day, we all have challenges and a lot of these challenges that we have fallen into some general areas.

Welcome to the How to Succeed Podcast. The show that helps you get to the top and stay there. This is How To Succeed at Selling Girl Scout Cookies. The show is brought to you by Sandler Training the worldwide leader and sales management and customer service training. For more information on Sandler Training, including white papers, webinars, and more, visit Sandler.com.

You know drama is one of those things that bring TV ratings. Everybody loves drama. Everybody loves to watch reality TV these days cause it's a freight train about to happen but we can't turn it off. People are attracted to drama. Just the natural way it is. But you don't want drama at your workplace. Drama is poison. 

There are several significant challenges that sales representatives and sales teams face in selling into complex enterprise accounts. One of the most daunting is that enterprise sales cycles can be long and drawn out. Months and years can pass while pursuing an opportunity with an enterprise organization. And as the time passes, the doubt, uncertainty, risks, and costs add up. And this draining of resources goes beyond the financial.  The human assets applied to an enterprise pursuit and the overall energy of the selling organization are also casualties over time.

Gabe Larson, Director of the InsideSales.com Labs and host of the Sales Acceleration podcast, joins us for a special conversation about the end of the month. Gabe's team has just released new information about the best and worst practices of sales teams at the end of the month. Learn what to do and what not to do to make the most of the last few days of the quota period.

Welcome to the "How to Succeed Podcast." The show that shows you how to get to the top and stay there. This is "How to Succeed at Preventing Objections."  The show is brought to you by Sandler Training. The worldwide leader in sales, management and customer service training. For more information on Sandler Training, including free wi-papers, webinars and more, visit Sandler.com and look under the resources tab.  I'm your host Mike Montague and my guest this week is Joe Ippolito He is a Sandler trainer from Boston. And we're gonna talk to him about how to succeed at preventing objections. Joe, welcome to the show. Tell me a little bit about objections and why you picked this for a topic and who should be paying attention today?

In working with thousands of salespeople and sales managers, a consistent area of concern they have is to improve on their stall and objection handling skills. When prospects say things like “we’re not quite ready,” “your price is too high,” “were staying where we are,” “you do the same thing my current supplier does,” I could go on.

Traditional sales training says present, present, present and close, close, close – convince your prospect with a compelling presentation, show him enough value, and he will surely buy.  When I first got into sales I really sweated the presentations.  I practiced them over and over; used different visual props and brochures; tried a variety of persuasive arguments; and created notebooks full of evidence favoring my product and my company.  Ultimately it became apparent that no matter how exciting or compelling my presentation was, my close rate was mostly dependent on what happened before the presentation, not during it.

Fear may be the most powerful motivator affecting your buyers’ decisions. However, in their effort to maintain an image of power and control, buyers will be reluctant to share their true anxieties and concerns with you. You’ll increase your sales production when you help buyers discover and overcome their fears, show that you are sensitive to those issues, and then lead those buyers to the conclusion that your product will replace their fear with peace of mind.

After Thanksgiving, many of us sales people feel fat and happy, and decide to pull off the throttle and take some down time. After all, nobody really wants to talk to sales people, make decisions, or think about expenditures. Right? Wrong! The little known secret is that the holiday season is a fantastic time to assemble a powerful framework that builds your business, and sets you up for a great first quarter.

Reaching out to customers via mobile messaging has proven to be an effective strategy to grow both revenues and customer loyalty. If your business doesn’t run a mobile messaging campaign, then may be time to start.

By focusing on tracking activities in a Customer Relationship Management software, you can evaluate which things influence prospects to move forward in your sales process. Understanding exactly what’s moving a deal forward will help you decide the best next steps you should take to close any similar deal in the future. Tracking activities also highlights the telltale signs that a deal might be slipping away, and helps you pay it the proper attention to keep it moving forward. 

People buy emotionally; we’ve all heard that. But what does it mean? It means that people make buying decisions emotionally; they justify these decisions intellectually. To further understand this concept, it helps to know who is making the decisions and who is justifying the decisions. 

Too often, sales professionals make one fundamental mistake that could be costing them thousands in commissions. They believe that their job is to sell products or services to clients by explaining why their product is superior. Success in sales (and the size of your commission check), is determined not by the information you give, but rather, by the information you collect.

As sales managers, we’re all familiar with the conversation. One of your sales reps is making the case to pursue an opportunity and you question why. “It’s a big deal” is the response, “It’s right in our power swing”. Or perhaps, with candor entering the room, “I really need to win this”. And these are all reasons, of course. But what do they really mean? What’s the real business sense for your firm in pursuing the deal? And what’s the business risk?

During times when both business and training budgets are tight, management often asks what can be done to improve the return on the company’s investment of training dollars.

What scares you about the selling process? Which part of the selling process causes you the most stress? Whatever it is (and maybe it’s nothing at all), deal with it by using Sandler’s Up-Front Contract.

It sounds heretical for a sales trainer to say, "Stop selling features and benefits," doesn’t it? Traditionalists have been preaching features-and-benefits selling for ages. Apparently they think it gets results, but I think it’s a lot of unnecessary hard work. It’s merely a safe way to sell unproductively. At best, it’s arm’s-length selling, and it’s not effective today. Features and benefits do not lead people to make buying decisions. Features and benefits may sometimes confuse the issue.

In almost every buying decision, you’ll work with a cast of characters who are involved in the process. Often, one member of the cast—usually someone at or near the top of the organizational chart—has the responsibility for making the decision. Sometimes, however, a committee of decision makers is involved.

All salespeople with a small amount of experience have a 30-second commercial (a.k.a elevator pitch, popcorn introduction, etc.) down pat. And that's the problem.

When someone says to you, "Don’t worry – I have a system," you may roll your eyes and get ready for disaster. After all, systems are for betting on horses or getting around rules, right? Wrong – a system is an orderly arrangement of elements that can lead to success

If you are running into price objections with your prospects, you are probably giving intellectual presentations, i.e., emphasizing price or features and benefits. One of Sandler’s cardinal rules is that people buy emotionally, they only make decisions intellectually. It is "pain" that will get you a sale, not price.

Ask salespeople to list their least favorite selling activities, and you can count on “prospecting” being at the top of the list. And, the least favorite of all prospecting activities is unquestionably making cold calls.