Dave Mattson

People make buying decisions emotionally and justify those decisions intellectually – Sandler Principle 6

Nothing lasts forever, right? While it may seem pessimistic, having a plan for dealing with a client's departure is sound advice when it comes to maintaining business and clients. We spend so much time building solid, trusting relationships with clients that it can come as quite a blow when news hits that your client contact announces they're leaving their current position.

The question is a bit of a puzzle. Ideally, there would be a reference book that lists, by industry, how much time you should invest in prospecting activities. Unfortunately, there's no reference book. Why? How much time you invest will depend on the number of prospecting activities you plan, the nature of the activities, and the intended results of the activities

How often have you been sitting in the car after a sales call, and you thought of something you should have done that would have been more appropriate than what you just did? "I shoulda said...," "I shoulda asked...," "I shoulda...," "I shoulda...," "I shoulda..." You make a mental note of the shouldas...and then what? Nothing! With everything else that goes on during the day, your shouldas become a distant memory—lessons that could have been learned, but were lost instead.

When is the toughest prospect to sell the easiest prospect to sell? Give up? The answer is simple: when you call on him. Some buyers acquire a reputation for being tough, overbearing, demanding—just plain impossible to deal with. And guess what? Salespeople stop calling on them. Why put themselves through the abuse? Why endure the indignity? Why indeed, you may be thinking

Prepare a digital version of your 30-Second Commercial...and include that text in your LinkedIn profile. (tweet this!)

How does a screenwriter create one movie that's a box office blockbuster and another that's a flop? How does a playwright write one play that runs continuously for years and another that opens and closes in the same night? How does an author write one novel that's a number one best seller for 26 weeks straight and another that never makes the best-seller list? How

Hot off the presses...the Fall Edition of The Sandler Advisor. Click here to read. Please enjoy this newsletter excerpt, highlighting when and how to talk about money with a prospect. The Two-Minute Coach By Howard Goldstein, Sandler Corporate Today's question comes from Tracy, the owner of a graphics design company for which she does most of the selling. This is how she explains her problem

All too frequently, salespeople schedule appointments...and then forget about them until the day before the scheduled dates. Do you? Is preparation a last-minute activity often consisting of nothing more than a quick review of the notes from the original phone conversations when the appointments were scheduled...and perhaps a review of the prospects' web sites, advertising, or marketing materials? Can you answer the following questions about your next prospect appointment

Many salespeople are too eager to make presentations – are you? They view them as opportunities to establish the value of their products or services by demonstrating their unique aspects. You can't establish value, however, until you have determined which aspects, if any, are relevant to the prospects' situations.