Sandlerbrief

One morning Juan, a new sales hire for Acme, Inc., found himself under pressure from his manager, Brad.

Anne is a partner in a small consulting firm. During a recent meeting with a key prospect, a senior decision maker at a Fortune 1000 firm, she handled the presentation. Juan, her mentor and coach (and the founder of the practice) watched and took notes.

Grace is a new salesperson, recently hired by a major software firm. She’s three months into her first year on the job, and she’s in trouble.

Jane was in trouble. After a stellar year as an inbound salesperson for her company, she had committed herself to the challenge – and the dramatically higher income potential – of a sales career where she was responsible for developing her own leads.

After three months on the job, Myra checked the weekly spreadsheet and saw that her closing rate was abysmal. In fact, it was so low that she had landed at the bottom of her company’s sales rankings.

Maria was quite certain she’d laid the groundwork for a really big order. Her prospect, Bert, was asking lots of questions during her presentation. He was smiling a lot. He was nodding his head.

Has this ever happened to you? A seemingly “hot prospect” asks you a question that seems to signal interest in working with you. (For example: “How strict are you with quantity discounts?”)

Beth is a new sales hire at TaskFlow, an enterprise software firm specializing in custom-designed project management applications. The company targets Fortune 1000 workspaces. 

Have you ever had a qualified prospect pick your brain for information – and then turn around and buy from the competition?

When Jenny began working for ABC Widgets three months ago, she was put through the company’s sales training program, where she was taught three ways to begin a sales meeting with a prospective customer.

Has this ever happened to you? You’re in discussion with a prospect about the possibility of working together. The meeting is going well.

Have you ever been in the middle of delivering a presentation to a prospect … when you noticed that he or she seemed to have completely tuned out of whatever it was you were saying?

Have you ever made a prospecting phone call whose central message sounded something like this?