Stephanie Van Dam

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is: How much does training cost? With an average of 60% of sales reps achieving below-target results, I understand why.

One of David Sandler's classic selling rules sounds like a bit of a riddle when you first hear it: Don’t buy back tomorrow the product or service you sold today. Why would you ever do that? Who would want to? And under what circumstances would it possibly happen?

Here’s an interesting question for sales professionals: What counts as a “big opportunity” in your world? Think of a specific prospect

Elaine’s sales manager, Tom, had an unexpected question for her during their weekly one-on-one coaching session. It sounded like this: “What are you going to do to cut down on your TIOs?”

You may have heard of the popular Sandler selling rule known as “reversing” and wondered what it was all about. No, it has nothing to do with backing your car up. Reversing simply means you answer every question from a prospective buyer with a question of your own.

Most of David Sandler’s famous rules for selling are fairly easy to get your head around, once you understand the basic idea they are built on. But there is one Sandler Selling Rule that makes a lot of salespeople uncomfortable. It may be the hardest selling rule of all for sales professionals to accept and implement . . . for the simple reason that it is designed to shake us up a little. It reads as follows: There are no bad prospects, only bad salespeople.

What’s the least comfortable you’ve ever been during a discussion with a prospect?

We've all been on sales calls where things have gotten a little awkward. It is probably not difficult at all for you to recall a time when the prospect you were talking to was acting uninterested…or maybe even a little bit hostile. How did you respond? How would you respond if you found yourself in such a situation again?

When a discussion started going south and seemed unlikely to improve, maybe your first inclination was to thank the prospect for his or her time, shake hands, and end the meeting. Here's some advice. Don't.

Have you ever gone out shopping for something and run into a salesperson who was a little too eager to show you exactly what you were looking for?

Jack, a new sales hire, was having lots of problems in initial meetings with his prospective buyers. Vera, his manager, sat in on a sales call with him to determine why Jack was closing so few of his prospects in what was supposed to be a one-call close, and why he was discounting so heavily whenever he did close a deal. The answer, she saw, lay in the way Jack conducted his sales interviews.

Carlos was in a great mood. Forty minutes in, the meeting with his top prospect’s senior staff was going great. He was getting nothing but engagement, smiles, and positive body language from everyone around the table, including the CEO of the company. He knew what that meant. He was about to close his first big deal! The timing couldn’t have been better. Because this was a potentially major account, Carlos' manager Charlene was in attendance. Today, she would get to see him work his magic first hand.