Qualifying

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.

In the 4th quarter, depending on your clientele, many have been given a budget to work with for the year, and the natural tendency of a good number of those with money to spend is to not spend it all too soon.

Winning enterprise business presents unique challenges to selling teams and selling organizations in general. First you need to understand how selling to large corporations differs from the less complex world of selling to small and medium-sized companies. It takes time, energy, commitment and money but the payoff can be huge.

A few months ago, one of our clients told us how he used a powerful technique to help one of his team members who was having some problems with moving buyers toward a decision. During a role-play session, he shared a Sandler strategy called “stripping line.”

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

Going on a sales call can be a good opportunity for you and your business and so it’s only natural that people make this mistake working with a potential client; they get so anxious to sell, sell, sell that they spill their candy in the lobby. The problem is that once you give away all your candy…why should the client feel the need to come back for another conversation? They already have what they want!

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

By spending more time getting "no's" from prospects, our salespeople actually increased the time spent in conversations with qualified prospects. Read about how one sales manager helped a struggling sales rep get off of probation and have her best year ever.