Qualifying

As the year winds down, sales professionals face a critical juncture to wrap up with strong results. Here are 7 tips for maximizing success in the final stretch. These streamlined strategies offer sales professionals a roadmap for a powerful finish and a robust start to the upcoming year. 

Goals and plans without action are just words on a page. But where should we start? What actions will you need to drive personal performance? What’s the most important behavior that will help you hit your goals? When you think about it, goals are created to establish new habits, and habits are ingrained behaviors.

Should you sell on the ROI that your product or service delivers?

The logical and rational answer to this question is of course you should!

But people and organizations are not always logical and rational when it comes to making purchases. Think about something you purchased recently. How much logic and reason went into the decision and when did those calculations happen in the process?

Feature dumping kills deals! Leverage your presentation or demonstration to give them what they asked for but get something in return to help you qualify and quantify this opportunity. Here's how.

Buyer's remorse, the feeling of regretting a purchase, is a common challenge in sales. Securing a "yes" from a buyer is just the beginning. The real selling process starts after that affirmative response. By proactively addressing any lingering doubts or concerns the buyer may have, sellers can help them navigate the emotional journey of post-purchase uncertainty. Here's how.

When a prospect asks you to set up a presentation, do you instantly agree? Lots of sellers do. Sometimes it’s because they’re excited about the possibility of engaging with a person or group, they haven’t been able to connect with.  But if the presentation results in “Let us think about it,” you’ve wasted time, even if it does put you in front of new people.

Interest is a state of wanting to know about someone or something. Motivation is a reason for action. Many salespeople are good at uncovering interests or problems buyers are experiencing. Exceptional salespeople are good at uncovering or enabling motivation to act. Guage the problem’s impact and the motivation to solve it with these questions.

Tonal qualities play a big role in how prospects perceive you. Make sure you’re not making them uncomfortable by unknowingly sounding sharp, dominant, or aggressive.

What do you do when a buyer or a prospective buyer says something aggressive or confrontational? Forget about right and wrong. Forget about whose fault it is or isn’t. That’s not an effective way to communicate with the buyer. Fall back! Find something you can take ownership of and own it!

Are you focused on Winning the Sale or just the WIN? 5 Tips to Focus on What's Important Now in your sales process!

There are 4 different communication patterns that exist, each defined by distinct strengths and characteristics. Understanding the DISC styles and knowing your own, will improve your communication with others. Allowing others to accommodate your communication style increases your credibility, which can build trust between you and those you communicate with. Learning to adapt your style to theirs helps build the rapport that leads to sales!

When we give buyers permission to get into our head, we can’t do our job as sales professionals effectively. If we allow ourselves to become emotionally involved in a discussion with a buyer, we give that buyer control over us. If a buyer tries to manipulate us, and succeeds, that’s not on the buyer. It’s on us!

Your job is to set yourself apart from the competition. If you’re selling in the traditional way, by emphasizing features and benefits, the only thing setting you apart is the company name on your business card – and maybe your winning smile. Let’s face it though, you need more than that!

Fourth quarter can bring extra stress to sales teams. Here are three ways to avoid end of the year stress and burnout.

Have you ever been on a sales call and get the sense that the other person has checked out of the discussion? We’ve all been there. Don’t fail into the prospect’s trap and help them end the meeting! Now is the time to follow the Sandler Rule, “If you feel it, say it.” Here’s how to uncover their issues.

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

Identify the most relevant pain indicators your prospects are likely to experience. Then use those pain indicators as the foundation of a respectful peer-to-peer conversation about whether it makes sense to invest the necessary time and energy in a deeper discussion about the possibility of working together. If it doesn’t make sense… move on!

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?”

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