Management & Leadership

The Sandler Research Center queried a subset of business leaders and sales professionals to provide a snapshot of the workplace right now.  Who is working in the office, who is visiting customers, where are business conversations happening and how do these vary by industry.

Sometimes when I train salespeople, I joke that the reason we ended up in sales is because we didn’t do our homework in school. Therefore, our grades weren’t so great and the rest is history. The irony is that the most effective sales people do their “homework”, but yet don’t use “getting ready” as a reason to put-off such things as prospecting calls. Yet, we all can use a few pointers on getting things done on-time and time management in sales.

Many sales managers are promoted from the ranks—the salesperson who, while not perhaps the top earner, was always consistently up there. In addition, the newly promoted manager is usually pretty good at the weekly paperwork. Understand, there is nothing wrong with these qualities. 

This is not only a Sandler Rule, it is the title of David H. Sandler’s book about his unique selling system and how it was developed. In it, Sandler said: “Learning how to sell professionally is a lot like learning how to ride a bicycle. People don’t learn to sell at a seminar, but the reinforcement training of a seminar is helpful…

If you’ve been a sales manager for any length of time, you’ve heard it all. All of the excuses…all of the “if onlys” that salespeople use to preface their explanations for lack of performance. If you’ve been a salesperson for any length of time, you’ve likely used one (or more) of those “if only” excuses.