Sales Process

Retail champions, the subject of my book RETAIL SUCCESS IN AN ONLINE WORLD, outlines not only how to connect with customers face-to-face but also a long-term engagement strategy for after the customer leaves the store. 

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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.

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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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Joe Ippolito, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at preventing sales objections to close more sales. Get the best practices for selling, collected from around the world.

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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Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way podcast. Hosts from Sandler Training will discuss impactful information about trending topics and strategic selling. In this episode, Brian Sullivan, VP of Enterprise Selling talks with Marcus Cauchi and Dave Davies about Channel Selling in the Enterprise World.

Listen Time: 43 Minutes

Greg Skloot is President and COO at Crystal, an online app that can tell you anyone's DISC personality before you meet them. Greg and his team at Crystal are a new strategic partner of Sandler Training, and he will tell you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to tailor your sales pitch to your prospect's personality.

Listen Time: 24 Minutes

This is a special bonus episode, a look back at this year’s Sandler Summit and one of our opening keynotes by Andy McCredie. He is a Sandler trainer from the UK and did a killer hour-long talk on closing the sale. The full talk is available in Sandler Online. Here are some quick tips on How to Succeed at Closing more Sales.

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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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Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer and two-time author, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at selling across the executive level. Get the best practices collected from around the world for using your executives to sell to the prospect's.

<Listen Time: 28 Minutes

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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John Rosso, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at closing complex sales and navigating enterprise decision processes. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

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Troy Elmore, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at dealing with the competition and selling a crowded marketplace. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

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Geof Bowie, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at achieving a flow state in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

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Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, describe how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses one of the most common enterprise sales challenges, extended sales cycles.

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Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, explain how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses the idea of sophisticated competition – a challenge that, while present in the simple selling arena, is extremely prominent in enterprise selling.

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Welcome to Selling the Sandler Way podcast. Hosts from Sandler Training will discuss impactful information about trending topics and strategic selling.

Listen Time: 28 Minutes

In enterprise selling, making decisions becomes a much more complex endeavor. Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling describe how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses this common enterprise sales challenge.

Watch Time: 2 Minutes

This special bonus episode takes you back about 25 years to a training session with our founder, David H. Sander. He talks about why a selling system is so important to your career, even if you don't pick his...

Listen Time: 9 Minutes

Learn how the Sandler Enterprise Selling program addresses the idea of cross-functional sales teams with Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling.

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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

Learn how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program can help you win, grow, and retain enterprise accounts from Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, Brian Sullivan. 

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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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When our clients are elephant hunting or are selling in the enterprise space, we encourage them to engage their executives in peer-to-peer selling to their counterparts at prospect organizations.

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Are you taking advantage of the Sales Accountability platform? Learn how to access and take advantage of your performance analytics available to you through the tool.

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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, as well as, the companion video course.

Listen Time: 10 Minutes

Looking for the best way to log your daily activity and sales? Learn the best way to navigate your Sales Accountability dashboard today.

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One important principle that resonates with all the other elements of the Sandler system is “Follow Through.”

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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The second decade of the twenty-first century is approaching its finish line. As it does, sales as a profession is going through a period of extraordinary change. In this post, we will look at some of the biggest changes on the horizon for salespeople.

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There are only a few weeks left in Q4, which means that lots of sales professionals are asking themselves a familiar question right about now: How do I make the most of the time between now and December 31?

Sales managers, would you rather have a team of multitalented salespeople…or a multitalented team of salespeople? No, that’s not a trick question. But, the answer may be a bit tricky.

Learn how to create a sales culture with Matthew Pletzer, Sandler trainer, and Mike Montague, VP of Online Learning at Sandler to talk about creating a sales culture and how that differs from company culture.

Dale Bierce, Sandler trainer from Sacramento, CA, talks about the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques sales managers and leaders should have towards sales forecasting. Is your sales pipeline predictable and reliable? Learn how to succeed in knowing what is coming from Sales.

Lorraine Ferguson, Sandler trainer from Albany, NY and author of the new Sandler book, The Unapologetic Saleswoman, shares her thoughts about being a strong, confident woman in the sales profession. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of top female sales performers, and uncover the challenge and benefits of saleswomen. 

Danny Wood, Sandler trainer, shares his thoughts about the best questioning strategies and how to get to the next level in your sales skills. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of top performers, who are masters of this technique. 

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. 

Dean Langfit, Sandler trainer from Akron, OH, talks about how to motivate, hold accountable, and coach your team. Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of today's top managers.

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.

In this special retro-edition, we go back to the early 1990's with David H Sandler as he explains the antenna you need for the sales profession. David Sandler talks about how to keep your eyes, ears, and mind open to new sales opportunities. He even shares a quick line for how to start a sales conversation on the golf course!

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.

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?

Of the many daunting challenges that sales teams face in selling into complex enterprise accounts, one of the most frustrating is that of long, drawn-out sales cycles. Months can pass, even years, while pursuing a major opportunity with an enterprise account, an opportunity that may or may not be won. As that precious time passes, the doubt, the uncertainties, the risks and the costs all increase. How can selling organizations overcome this challenge?

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.

Learn how to keep a healthy and sustainable sales funnel. Ken Guest is a Sandler trainer and author of Selling in Manufacturing and Logistics. He talks about how to clear out the junk, keep deals moving, and close more sales with a healthy pipeline.

 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.

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. 

Sometimes, even the best product needs a little help from the team to become a legend.

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 confirm your agreements, get referrals, and deal with the competition in this important episode. Troy Elmore talks about how to finish an appointment or sale. Learn the best practices for confirming agreements and determining what should happen next.

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.

Learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques for successful marketing from one of the leading experts. Douglas has read over 150 marketing books and interviewed the authors for his podcast. He shares his favorite lessons learned and takeaways to help us fill the sales funnel with qualified marketing leads.

“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?

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.

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.

Kevin Hallenbeck joins us to talk about the advanced Sandler technique of Negative Reverse Selling. Negative Reverse Selling combines reverse psychology with Sandler's questioning techniques. This is a very powerful, advanced strategy for getting to the truth in any conversation.

Karl Scheible joins Dave Mattson to talk about what happens with the competition is invited into one of your accounts. How do you deal with competitive bids or other situations where you are not the only provider?

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.

Gregg Kessler, one of our Global Accounts trainers, shares a special audio blog about how to successfully complete a pre-call plan to improve your effectiveness and efficiency in the sales call.

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

This selling the Sandler way episode is all about using stories in your sales process. Dave Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training, interviews Sean Coyle, one of our corporate trainers and prospecting experts about how to use third-party stories to engage your prospects emotionally in the sale.

This year, we are combining the Selling the Sandler Way podcast series with this show, and adding some special audio blog episodes. On Fridays, Dave Mattson, our President and CEO, will interview Sandler trainers about how to succeed in sales and sales leadership. This first episode is all about getting back to the basics of selling the Sandler way.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Here is a 5 step TOTAL marketing process to design, plan, act on and measure your marketing program this year.

Dan Stalp talks about how to set sales goals for the new year, and then back into a behavioral plan to achieve them. You will learn what you should measure, how to set realistic goals, and the techniques need to find success in creating a sales cookbook.

Mike Jones, Sandler trainer from Ohio and new author of Selling in Manufacturing and Logistics, joins us to talk about the best practices for those industries. You will learn how to avoid wasting time in the bid process or responding to RFPs that you have no chance of winning. Mike talks about how to find, pursue and close the most profitable deals of your career.

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.

One of the most obvious reasons you should be building brick walls around your existing clients is to reduce the impact of aggressive competitor activity. While you are off flirting with seemingly more attractive and exciting new opportunities, your competitors will be targeting your “home base.”

Jody Williamson, Sandler trainer and author of the  Contrarian Salesperson returns to the podcast to talk about the decision step and how to deal with influencing factors and additional decision-makers.

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.

Many salespeople are this time of year. When October, November, and December roll around, and you find yourself on edge because you’re a little (or maybe a lot) behind quota, please don’t do what most salespeople do. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, “Well, it’s the end of Q4; let’s face it, that’s always a tough time of the year for me.”

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.

As the New Year begins, it’s natural for sales teams to start thinking about ways to fine-tune their sales forecasting process. Below are some simple rules that will help you and your team improve the accuracy and efficiency of its forecasting.

Mark McGraw, our 2017 David H. Sandler Award winner talks about the art and science of closing the sale. Learn how to get agreements and close more deals with our sales trainer from Atlanta, GA.

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.

One surefire way to increase your selling success—close more sales, more quickly, and more consistently—is to call on the right people for the right reason with the right product or service. That makes sense. But, for the product or service you want to sell, who are the right prospects and what are the right reasons?

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.

But, that’s exactly what many salespeople attempt to do when they engage with a new prospect. Typically, it plays out in one of two ways. Either the salesperson attempts to force his solution on the prospect (after nothing more than a cursory analysis of the situation), or he allows the prospect to dictate the solution (again, without a proper analysis of the situation).

Later this month, myself and Marketing Director, Lindsey Demetris, are hosting a free webinar detailing how to drive revenues through social selling. We plan on teaching our viewers how to target efficiently, connect appropriately, and build engagement.

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.

Early in every sellers’ career, they learn to segment clients. They have As, Bs, Cs, and “everybody else.” What separates great sellers from others, is their ability to balance these segments and manage their relationship with each. 

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 primary questions looming in the minds of prospects when they first talk with salespeople are, “What do you know about my company?” and “What do you know about my industry?”​ If, in the first few minutes of conversation, you don’t convey through your questions or comments that you understand something about the company’s goals or the challenges it faces, the interaction will be short-lived.  You’ll be perceived as “just another salesperson.” 

Rule 28. A sales meeting is your sales presentation. Master the skills that support a great sales meeting. Here's the bottom line, we want our sales meetings to be great, and we know they're not. And sometimes they're not because we're running from one meeting, we thought we had about a 30-minute window to get ourselves ready for a sales meeting which turns into a three-minute window and so we show up unprepared.

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 from Boston and new author of Why People Buy, joins us to talk about the best practices for uncovering Pain. You will learn how to discover why people buy and what to do about it. Greg shares how to start sales conversations that close deals and how to uncover the emotional reasons people buy from you.

The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe.

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.

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.

A while back I attended a one-day Prospecting Boot Camp for salespeople in the heart of downtown London. After nine days of visiting attractions abroad, I decided to let my wife do the final day by herself, so I could endeavor to learn the differences (if any) in the mindset of British salespeople from their American counterparts.

Have you ever wondered, “What am I doing wrong?” or, “How can I take my practice to the next level?” If you have, you’re not alone, and you’re in luck. Our newest book release, Asking Questions The Sandler Way, answers both of those quandaries and reveals so much more. In the book, Sandler trainer and author, Antonio Garrido, outlines how he revitalized his practice by changing his approach. Below we have identified a few key takeaways from the book.  

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.

Mike Crandall, a Sandler trainer and author from Oklahoma, talks about his best practices for fundraising, including asking for money, creating a plan, and getting introductions to the right people. Mike shares his attitudes, behaviors, and techniques for raising more money and doing it with a sales mindset.

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.

Students of the Sandler methodology quickly learn that selling is not about lists of compelling features and benefits; it’s not about clever closes or flashy literature and expensive marketing collateral. It’s not about hogging all the airtime in the meeting, nor is it about forcing our own agenda into the buying process. It’s not about jazzy presentations or brow-beating the other guy into submission.

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.

Do you talk too much?  Many salespeople do. How do I know that? Because I use to do it! But more significantly, when I visit a store and indicate my interest in something it seems the sales clerk takes that as a cue to talk too much.

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.

Learn how to succeed at aligning sales and marketing. Erik Host-Steen, Founder of SMP Alignment, shares his best practices for aligning your sales and marketing teams. From effective handoffs to qualified leads and using technology to smooth out the process. Erik talks about how to get your sales and marketing departments to work together.

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 our firm, one of the top requests we get is to help write or re-write scripts for companies. Each time we get this request I smile, because we know scripts simply do not work.  There are four key reasons why scripts don’t work.

I made this statement about the fact that it's not what we sell that makes us different, it's how we sell it. Although he had heard that Sandler rule before, he was taken back and asked me to repeat it several times. What he began to understand was that to differentiate ourselves in selling situations we often look at the features and benefits of what we're selling. 

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 Paul Lanigan, 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.

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 Roger Wentworth, a Sandler Trainer.

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.

In this episode of Selling the Sandler Way, Dave Mattson, the President and CEO of Sandler Training explores the top sales challenges and how to overcome them with Mike Ross, a Sandler Trainer.

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 a special program presented by Sandler Training. Today's show is designed to deal with the hardest situation that you as a salesperson are experiencing, or you as a leader, or some of the most common issues that you're facing day to day. It's really the stuff that gives you stress. What we're going to talk about today are some tactics and strategies to help you progress either your sale from one step to the next, or your organization, your company. We've got two different types of groups listening today. We've got leaders/managers, and we also have some sales professionals. We're going to go back and forth throughout the day. Regardless, if you've got to progress your organization or progress your sale, I think being stuck—as an example, in the sales process—is not a healthy place to be.

Lindsay Harle- Kadatz, Sandler client and author of "Depression Constipation," joins us for a special conversation about mental health in sales and entrepreneurship. Lindsay talks about how journaling and small actions helped her to get unblocked and moving again.

We are proud to introduce a new Sandler podcast, Selling the Sandler Way with 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. Listen to episode one in which Dave discusses the psychology behind the sale with Sandler Trainer, Pat Heidrich.

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?

Sales enablement is the idea – and follow me here – that all employees who interact with clients should have the tools and are able to do so easily, consistently, and effectively.  To empower your employees to do this, there are three major areas of focus to consider: Tracking and Analysis, Technique/Training, Technology and Tools. If you can incorporate a system that excels at bringing your employees through all three of these phases, you will be well on your way to enabling a successful team.

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.

Email marketing is an inexpensive and effective way to get in touch with prospects if you take the proper steps in crafting them. The information you relay in your email and the way you share it has a direct impact on how well your email will perform with recipients. You don’t have to be a professional writer to get attention or to create a successful email campaign, but you should be concise and include compelling information. Most prospective buyers are bombarded with emails from a variety of businesses, on a daily basis. Incorporating the right details allow you to break through the clutter and helps ensure that you make a connection. 

Third-party stories, testimonials, case study, reviews, and other “social proof” can be a powerful technique in your sales toolkit. Storytelling carries a fair amount influence with your prospects and clients when done correctly. Stories can also redirect conflict, create an emotional connection, and help illustrate key features and benefits.

Whether it is time for a touch-point call or you’re visiting a new prospect for the first time, incorporating one or more of these phrases into your approach could be a deal killer. From giving your prospect an easy way to put things off to using too much jargon or lingo, it’s time to strike these words and phrases from your selling vocabulary.

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.

Remember this rule when meeting with potential customers at your trade show booth:  The essence of selling is not telling; it is asking questions and sharing third party stories that will help your prospect self-discover his own need for your product or service.  People do not buy features and benefits; they buy solutions to problems.  If you want to stand out from your competition, stop overloading prospects with information and brochures.  Start asking thought and emotion provoking questions.

Social selling means using virtual tools and online networks to add more prospects, opportunities, and information to your sales pipeline. 

Have you ever lost a sale because of a problem you could have and probably should have dealt with earlier in the sales process? Have you ever lost a customer because you waited too long to tell them about a delay or defect? If you know a problem is going to blow up in your face, defuse it now.

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.

If you don’t start your sales calls with the end in mind, you should not be surprised when it doesn’t end up where you hoped. For example, at the end of a good presentation, your prospect leaves you with a Think-It-Over. After all, you can’t blame a prospect for doing something that you failed to emphasize is unacceptable. If you want to control what happens at the end of a sales call, focus on the beginning.

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. 

Sandler principles are rock solid and timeless. However, the expression and execution of the Sandler Selling System are constantly evolving with changing times to stay relevant with current technologies and trends in business. As our world-famous Sandler Submarine approaches its 50^th birthday, we thought it was time to give it a new look.

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?

Technology and the sales process have always been besties—the telephone, the typewriter, and the GPS were old friends of the traveling sales representative. Today's buyer's journey has evolved into online-heavy research and marketing, but technology—just a different sort—is still crucial to the sales process and its success.

If your closing rate is suffering or it’s taking longer than it should to close sales, you may be sabotaging your own efforts. Take a close look at how you interact with your prospects and make sure that each interaction adds value to the relationship, is focused on defining the opportunity, and keeps the selling process moving forward.

Do you think it would be possible to actually sell more and sell more easily? Could you actually spend less time, money and energy on business development and enjoy more revenue and profit? When you stop trying to sell to everyone, you can actually invest time and effort to build real ideal client relationships with qualified prospects. You can work smarter instead of harder.

As a buyer, what comes to mind when you think of the word, "Salesperson"? Usually what comes to mind are things like… used cars, polyester suits, briefcases, and flip charts or PowerPoint presentations. Many people dislike dealing with salespeople, and some even shudder at the thought of being one. Few, if any, children grow up dreaming of being salespeople, yet it is the most common profession in the world. Why is that?

Got a trade show coming up for your company? The common attitude is that you need to ramp up with lots of zip and swag to attract people and get them to buy. This is the wrong approach. Here are some tips on why and how to make your next show far more valuable.

As salespeople who work with homeowners, we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that our most important job is to create quotes. We may decide to do as many quotes as possible, email those quotes and leave lots and lots of messages—all in the hope that prospects will hunt us down and tell us they've decided to buy. Instead, our job is to start conversations that generate decisions—small decisions at first, and bigger decisions as the sales process moves forward. That's the objective of effective follow through: to create more conversations that lead to a clear decision. If you can do that consistently, and monitor your progress toward your income goals as you do, then your numbers will be on track. If you don't, they won't be.

Imagine the following scenario.  After a few meetings with a prospect during which you examined his current situation and analyzed his needs and future goals, you developed and presented a four-step approach for what you believed to be the best fit solution to meeting his challenge.  The investment necessary to obtain and implement your solution is $12,800.  The prospect, while impressed with your solution, commented, "That's a bit more than we expected to spend.  We were hoping that we would be looking at something around $10,000."   What would you do?

When someone hands you a business card and says, "you should call this person", it's not really a referral. Without more information, it is more like they're sending you on a cold call. Cold calling is way down the list of favorite prospecting activities for most salespeople, and sometimes that frustration can spill over to referrals.

If your selling process ends with a close, you're doing it all wrong. "What!?! That makes no sense," I can hear you saying. "Closing is the ultimate success." All true. But you can close more (how does 80% sound?), see fewer clients and, best of all, make even fewer presentations. In the process, you'll feel more essential to your clients, more motivated, and more in control.

Understanding the importance of various accounts helps sellers sort customers and prepare for the next appropriate step in a relationship with the client.

Salespeople tend to be focused, driven, and almost single-minded when it comes to closing a sale. While this attitude can bring about great results, it can also prevent a salesperson from considering alternative ways to approach the sales relationship. Does the client prefer frequent phone calls to check in, or would your sales process run more smoothly with scheduled email follow ups? Take the time to re-evaluate your sales team's focus. Try these seven tips to drive new revenue and improve your sales game.

The infamous summer sales slump may be in full swing in your business, but it's time to turn things around. By rethinking your summer sales plan, you can use a slower market to your advantage. Follow our guide to building a sales plan that withstands summer slumps and turn these notoriously slow months into productive and profitable opportunities.

To be a great salesperson, you need to have more than charm and a positive attitude. Today's sales environment requires you to utilize advanced tools in your sales process. We dug deep into our sales tool belt to provide you with some of the most advanced and highly rated programs and apps. Try out a few of these tools if you are looking to become a stronger, more competitive salesperson in your industry.

The explosion of social media has created lots of new opportunities for your company when it comes to sales prospecting. Utilizing the tools available to you can expand your business and be a source of continuous lead generation. Or it can cause a very embarrassing publicity nightmare. Here are five rules you should follow to cash in on social media opportunities and become a successful sales professional:

Think back on your sales appointments over the past two weeks. How often did you use each of the following: "is there anything…" "could you…" "would you…" "can I" "I'll follow up on… does that work for you?" Each of those questions creates an automatic reflexive (Pavlovian) response in our prospects. The response to the first four is typically "no" and to the last one is "sure (but I won't answer)"

You're meeting with a prospect. You've asked all the appropriate questions to uncover the prospect's problem, concerns, desires, goals, and expectations. After fully analyzing the situation, you announce with no hesitation whatsoever, "No problem. I have exactly what you need." Does the prospect gasp a sigh of relief, utter under his breath, "Thank goodness," and pull a purchase order from the drawer? Perhaps in Grimm's version of the story, but not in the real world. Why

A sales template is defined as the step by step set of interactions you want your prospect to go through because it will give you a clear competitive advantage or otherwise increase the chances of you winning the business. An efficient sale system enables you to consistently achieve a desired outcome or set of outcomes without wasting time, energy, money etc. The most effective sales templates are basic enough to accommodate for change (focused on each stage of the sales meeting).

Have you ever killed a sale by bringing up an irrelevant feature to your prospect? Something you, or probably your marketing department, thought you prospect should know about before they signed up? At Sandler, this is known as "painting seagulls in your prospect's picture." Unfortunately, your seagull can quickly turn into an albatross. Traditionally trained salespeople who sit through hours of product training before being let out in front of prospects can't wait to share all their product knowledge when they get in front of anyone, qualified prospect or not

Practice makes perfect. Just like pro golfers, sales experts can't expect to improve without putting in rounds. Listen as Sandler CEO Dave Mattson explains the similarities between Sandler trainers and pro golfers.

Sandler Training's Karl Scheible explains Sandler Rule #46: "There Is No Such Thing as a Good Try." At best, "try" indicates intention, but not commitment. If the outcome of an action is important, don't "try." Commit to it.

Sandler CEO Dave Mattson discusses why Sandler isn't just your typical sales training seminar. Sandler is more than just a couple of sales tips; it's a proven system based on continual reinforcement and incremental learning that results in a permanent behavior change. To see how there's no "quick fix" to sales, leadership and management training, visit sandler.com