Qualifying

Mike Montague interviews Brian Jackson on How to Succeed at Your 30 Second Commercial. Brian is an award-winning Sandler Trainer in San Diego, CA.

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.

Listen Time: 21 Minutes

Sandler Rule #2: Don't Spill Your Candy in the Lobby

Have you ever shared too much information, too soon?

Learn why it's important to save your "candy" for later when consulting with your sales prospects.

If we were to make a list of all of the hiring mistakes that people have made through their careers, I can promise you I've made every one of them. Having led sales teams for over 20 years, I think I've fallen into all of the traps of hiring mistakes. Over the last several years, we've identified a lot of the reasons why people don't succeed on the job and the reasons that managers hire them in the first place.

For those of you familiar with Sandler, you may have found that as you began to use Up Front Contracts, there was a process. That process may have started with feeling that it felt “sales-y” and contrived. Then, as you begin to better understand and practice, you may have discovered it is tool that you wonder how you ever sold WITHOUT up front contracts.

Whether you’re simply attempting to “get your message across” or struggling to persuade a prospect that your product or service is the best fit for his or her situation, it can sometimes (perhaps, too frequently) feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle.

Having a big pipeline of “prospects” is typically seen as desirable. The more prospects you put into the pipeline, the more will eventually emerge as customers. At least that’s the theory. And the theory is partially true. Some of the people you put in the pipeline will become customers. The question is, “How many will be customers and how long will it take for them to materialize from the other end of the pipe?”

By spending more time getting "no's" from prospects, our salespeople actually increased the time spent in conversations with qualified prospects.  Read about how one sales manager helped a struggling sales rep get off of probation and have her best year ever.  

At Sandler Training, we believe in not solely talking about features and benefits during your sales call, but rather focusing on the prospect’s needs. However, there is a time for presenting, once you have qualified the opportunity. Once a prospect is fully qualified in Pain, Budget, and Decision, then it is time for you to make the presentation, and you want to make that presentation as persuasive as possible.

If your goal is to find more prospects, get more and better referrals, and make more commission dollars in 2016 than you did in 2015, consider upping your social selling game. Here are four quick tips that will help you to avoid some common mistakes online.

Creating an effective sales pipeline can be a massive headache for sales leaders because reps have been known to stuff the pipeline with opportunities that have zero chance of closing. In a previous life, I took over a product specialist role selling a web-based media monitoring and crisis communications program. My first six weeks in that role was spent culling a $3 million pipeline down to $160,000 of real, qualified opportunities

Does this sound familiar to you? Prospect A says, "This looks very good. I think there's an excellent chance we'll do business." The salesperson thinks, "I've got one." Prospect B comments, "Your price is higher than we expected." The salesperson thinks, "I'll have to cut the price to close the deal." Prospect C reveals, "We were hoping for a shorter delivery time." The salesperson thinks, "I'll have to push this through as a rush order to get the sale."e