Jim Dunn’s been a Sandler trainer for 25 years, moving onto his 26th. He worked in the hospital supply and medical industry for around 12 years and a big part of what he did was managing a team after a period of successfully running a territory. Jim was hungry to improve and always sought what he could read or hear to improve on how he could be a better salesperson or sales manager and this led him to Sandler.
Jim is taking us through 10 timeless principles for improvement on how the best get better. The full idea comes out of the strategic coach program and the concept of how the best gets better comes from them, but we’re looking at it through the lens of our material. Jim works with a lot of large companies from all over in various industries between accounting, IT, manufacturing, distribution, and these companies want to grow and get better. As a trainer we see a typical 20/60/20. 20% take the material and grow. 60% do okay, but they need some prodding to grow and get better and improve. 20% need to get rid of non-performers and create a business of people who are better and stronger and may resist that change. These are the observations and applications of our best clients.
We as Sandler trainers have a great influence in other people’s lives and we are here to build out the success available for anyone who is looking to improve.
1. Great sales professionals stay on the right side of the trouble line.
If you draw a horizontal line and cut it in half on the left you have the no pay time activities. Working on proposals, admin work, travel, follow-up. The necessary pieces that lead us to become more efficient. The best improve by knowing how and when to take action on what’s most important. On the right side of the line is the pay time activities. We’re in front of clients, prospects, and customers. We’re on the phone and seeking the best prospects. If you’re working on a proposal and you don’t know where it will go that’s a no pay time activity. Pay time is how you’re leveraging your time where you’re working on deals that you know you have a high percentage of closing, as well as spending times with current customers and clients and servicing them well so that you know you can get referrals. Service the daylights out of your clients and they will bring you business. Asking if clients are happy and how you could improve can lead into a safe conversation about how a client can help you and how that can help build out your business.
2. They understand and can track how many face-to-face visits or phone calls it takes to close a deal.
In Sandler we use gate selling to understand and track the trajectory of a sale. We need to understand what needs to happen on the first call—the first cold call, or prospecting call—and we need to figure out what are the key things that need to happen and what do we need to say in order to move forward in the process of closing a sale. Companies understand whether it takes two calls or ten calls to consummate the deal. We need to drain our pipeline of the fluff that won’t turn into business. This will lead to great coaching, debriefing, and prebriefing on calls in order to understand what needs to happen in order to get a deal. This allows for onboarding new sales employees in a very productive manner as well.
3. They really understand how to use up-front contracts
Up front contracts can be misleading and folks misunderstand the concept. The keys with an upfront contract is a mutual agreement. The best users take the five points of the contract. The purpose. Time. Appreciation. Mutual agendas. Outcomes. The best Sandler people get customers, clients, and prospects comfortable. An upfront contract is an agenda which looks at the potential outcomes out of the conversation. We don’t leave meetings without a good, clear future. All this leads into the ultimate contract that creates an agreement before a presentation so that we know what the outcomes are.
4. They really understand money and can discuss without discounting themselves.
Great salespeople sometimes end up discounting themselves. The best salespeople have a healthy money concept and high self esteem so that they don’t find themselves willing to continuously and consistently discount ourselves which leads to a weakened self concept. If we really believe we’re worth the price we’re asking then we need to understand budget in its entirety and use the techniques in Sandler to find success. Discussing money with discounting to get the business is important in order to succeed.
5. They understand what it means to separate their identity from their role.
A key concept of the Sandler process is that a lot of us enter from being messed up. We’ve been trained that we’re our role performance. Whatever we’ve done defines our successes and then in sales we face a danger where if we allow our role performance to dictate our identity then it will affect our overall performance. We think 50,000 thoughts a day and 80% of those thoughts are negative. We’ve got to be able to change our self-talk in order to bolster our identity. Our best clients are able to isolate those two things and perform beyond rejection without letting it influence them.
6. They know how to get pain.
Pain is emotional involvement with present or future trouble. Great salespeople understand people emotionally, not intellectually. Most of the marketing and presentation we do in the world is based on feature and benefits, but for us in a sales call we need to understand what pain means and how we get it. A great 30 second commercial is the start to building out and finding pain. Using the pain funnel also creates a higher level of trust and bonding, and finally, the best sales people are able to get commitment that the issues we’re discussing are important enough for them to change.
7. They’re great with the tactics triangle.
We all know that in sales there are strategies for moving forward with a particular client and opportunity and there are also tactics: what do I say, what do I do, so that we can position ourselves to outshine the competition and get the deal. The ability to use the dummy curve to demonstrate vulnerability brings out a deeper discussion of information. The second part is reversing. We need to demonstrate good connecting statements to show clear listening then we need to ask intelligent questions so we demonstrate that we’re able to understand the issues that they’re facing. We drop back when we’re asked attacking questions and clarify the meaning from the person we’re talking to. Finally, we create slack with the prospect in a conversation and not inducing pressure in order to build rapport to open up individual’s to close themselves as opposed to depend on us to pressure them into a decision.
8. They’re great with ultimate contracts and get firm agreements before they give proposals.
We know that the problems with presenting before qualifying are mostly associated with closing. The new, the Sandler way of selling is qualify and close before presenting. We want to build out an ultimate contract verbally which builds buy in and a clear future on what will happen and how that will lead to us working together in the future, or, if not, we have a clear comprehension on what it means when we do not work together in the future. The key is to build the outcome of a presentation in the future. If you want to know the future, bring it to the present.
9. They have consistency in their prospecting plan.
Consistency in the prospecting plan is we get out of the cold call business as quickly as we can. We’re able to use the linked in strategy in order get in front of the right people and build out prospecting activities that move us into referral introductions. This means that we become entrenched in our current accounts and clients and we don’t have fears about our servicing.
10. They’re heat seeking missiles for pain, budget, and decision.
The best get better because every single call is about pain. Why would they want to buy from me? How can I create value? Budget. We’re very good at talking about it, we’re not afraid of it. We come up with a number that the prospect or client can agree with. And decision, we know who, why, we know what their decision making process is, and we know how they’re going to make it. We are the recommendation and we’re leading them in the right direction to solving the issue that they’re looking to resolve.
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