Business

Many business leaders make costly errors as they put together their plan for the year to come – errors that make it harder than it should be for their teams to implement the plan and attain the goals it identifies. Here are five of the most expensive mistakes we see. Avoid all five, and you will write a better business plan!

Here are three proven, painless strategies for starting and completing the right plan for the coming year – a plan that will help you make the best possible decisions over the next twelve months and keep your business humming.

Setting clear expectations is an important part of any sales leader’s working day. Unfortunately, it’s something that doesn’t always happen as effectively or as consistently as we might like. Here are five simple steps you can take to get better at this critical part of the job.

If you’re a sales leader, you are tasked with striking a delicate balance. Your job is not to sell for the members of your team – selling is what you hire, train, and retain good salespeople to do, after all. Yet your job is to help shape the business development strategies that make the most sense for your business, for the salespeople who report to you, and of course for your customers.

In selling to and serving major accounts, we hear a lot about value. Certain buzzwords have emerged around this topic, terms that, more often than not, simply add confusion.

Have you ever wondered why a once-promising new hire is performing far below your initial expectations? From one perspective, what’s happening here is pretty simple: the person you hired is not the person you interviewed. The dynamic at work in an interview situation is similar to the dynamic at work on a first date./blog/how-succeed-onboarding-new-hires-podcast

Give our podcast a listen to learn the right steps you need to take in order to create a sales playbook for your team.

Mike Montague interviews Tony Altham, Executive Director at BNI in the UK, on How to Succeed at Business Networking.

Collectively over the years I've heard every excuse as to why people don't need to track metrics. "You don't understand I'm just too busy to track that type of thing," or "what is that really going to do for me in the long run."  Well, in the long run, if you truly understand what the outcomes are statistically every time you pick up the phone or attend a networking event, couldn't you predict the future?  Wouldn’t that make life a little less stressful?

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In addition to the people in your company who deliver services and keep operations running, how much do you value the folks who bring in the most revenue, i.e. the top sales performers? Answering this question directly should be part of your overall business plan.

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Sandler V.P. of Online Learning, Mike Montague, interviews Matt Pletzer on How to Succeed in Succession Planning.

Listen Time: 23 Minutes

In sales, we all bundle our accounts, clients and prospects, into logical groupings to add clarity and understanding to our efforts. We use vertical categories, assembling together our healthcare, consumer products, technology accounts, and others. We also differentiate by geography, adding efficiency in territory management by bundling accounts based on physical locations. 

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Retail champions, the subject of my book RETAIL SUCCESS IN AN ONLINE WORLD, outlines not only how to connect with customers face-to-face but also a long-term engagement strategy for after the customer leaves the store. 

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Tim Priebe, Founder of T&S Online Marketing, talks about how to integrate Sandler into your marketing and shows you the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at marketing the Sandler way. Get the best practices for marketing collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 30 Minutes

In the past couple of decades, our workplaces have gone from the office to mostly virtual spaces. We get our jobs done and we communicate in the cloud. However, we still struggle with the same issues in communication which we had decades ago. Here are a few effective ways to overcome communication barriers in the workplace which you can apply right now.

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This is a special bonus episode, a look back at this year’s Sandler Summit and one of our opening keynotes by Glenn Mattson, Sandler trainer from New York City, talking about success.

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Learn how to build a better day. Whether it is yourself or your sales team, Jim Ayraud will help you learn the best practices for sales accountability and building new behavior habits.

Listen Time: 23 Minutes

The internal revolution that delivers a predictable, rapid growth curve requires a scalable sales team. This revolution always starts with the sales leader; it is always launched, modeled, promoted and defended by that leader, in close collaboration with the senior leadership of the company; and it always expands outward.

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Cal Thomas, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at sticking with your goals and achieving them. Get the best practices for goal setting collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 24 Minutes

Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer and two-time author, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at selling across the executive level. Get the best practices collected from around the world for using your executives to sell to the prospect's.

<Listen Time: 28 Minutes

It's common for people to mistake sales management for sales coaching. In fact, these are two very different roles. The table highlights some of the most notable differences.

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I’m often asked to identify a single “blind spot” that keeps leaders from growing their businesses aggressively. There are actually a number of these … but one that’s particularly common is the failure to collect best practices and assemble them in a regularly updated “playbook.”

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In enterprise selling, there is a heavy focus on business value. Watch to see how Brian Sullivan, VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling, addresses this challenge through the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program.

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Geof Bowie, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at achieving a flow state in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 21 Minutes

Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, describe how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses one of the most common enterprise sales challenges, extended sales cycles.

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Learn the guiding principles of effective management with Mike Montague and Caroline Robinson.

Watch Time: 54 Minutes

Watch Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling, explain how the Sandler Enterprise Selling Program addresses the idea of sophisticated competition – a challenge that, while present in the simple selling arena, is extremely prominent in enterprise selling.

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In this episode, Brian Sullivan, VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling, speaks with Paul Sandford, Managing Director of Sandler’s North Hampshire’s business operations in the U.K. Paul’s career includes successful sales and sales management positions at SAP, Success Factors, Concur Technologies, Open Text and Basware. 

Listen Time: 26 Minutes

The hot labor market is stressing hiring managers and their organizations like no other job cycle in the last 20 years. Despite the mounting pressure of filling an open role, organizations that remain true to their hiring standards will win in the long term.

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Learn how the Sandler Enterprise Selling program addresses the idea of cross-functional sales teams with Brian Sullivan, Vice President of Sandler Enterprise Selling.

Watch Time: 4 Minutes

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 9 Minutes

David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training and 6-Time Best-Selling Author, talks about his fifth book, Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders. The book is on sale here, as well as, the companion video course.

Listen Time: 12 Minutes

SMART Goal Setting with Mike Crandall: Mike Crandall, Sandler Trainer from OK, and Mike Montague, VP of Online Learning discuss SMART goal setting strategies.

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Let’s start by talking about the elephant in the room: Cold calling is almost every salesperson’s least favorite topic. In fact, the only two groups who like the idea of cold calling are those who have never done it and sales managers.

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Erin Pheil, Founder of the Mindfix Group out of Denver, talks about how to succeed at overcoming common head trash issues in sales with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful. Get the best practices collected from around the world for overcoming these mental roadblocks.

Listen Time: 31 Minutes

Learn how the insights and our real-time messaging works on the Sales Accountability platform.

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Welcome to the How to Succeed podcast, the show that helps you get to the top and stay there... This is How to Succeed at setting yourself up for a breakthrough.

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Brian Sullivan, VP of Sandler Enterprise Selling and author, interviews guest, Emma Barrett-Hoey about how to succeed at enterprise-level selling. Brian is a co-author of the new Sandler book, Sandler Enterprise Selling: Winning, Growing and Retaining Major Accounts.

This year, on Fridays, Dave talks about the attitude, behavior, and techniques of successful sales managers as he shares his thoughts on the 49 Sandler Rules for Sales Leaders.

Listen Time: 8 Minutes

People sometimes ask me whether there is a single, simple principle that will help everyone in the organization to learn and grow and improve over time, regardless of an individual’s position or level of experience. There is. But it may come as a surprise to you: embracing failure and embracing it quickly.

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This bonus episode is brought to you by the Sandler Annual Sales and Leadership Summit in Orlando, FL March 20th-22nd. To join our trainers from around the world and about a thousand of your high-performing colleagues, go to here for more information. 

Listen Time: 13 Minutes

Dave Trapani, Sandler trainer, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful at managing your pipeline. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 22 Minutes

Learn how to overcome self-limiting beliefs with Antonio Garrido.

Watch Time: 56 Minutes

Most of us who lead teams and organizations readily acknowledge that we should be doing more to invest in the personal and professional development of the people who report to us. We have a lot of responsibilities, we get busy, and, all too often, we don’t take action on this essential priority.

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Welcome to the How to Succeed podcast, the show that helps you get to the top and stay there... This is How to Succeed at avoiding the dangers of success.

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2019 is shaping up to be a very exciting year at Sandler, especially because of four important new strategic alliances we’ve formed. In this post, I want to look briefly at all four of the organizations with whom we’ve formed strategic partnerships with (Ziglar, Inc., Top Sales World, Grovo, and Evernote), and why each partnership is important.

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This bonus episode is brought to you by the Sandler Annual Sales and Leadership Summit in Orlando, FL March 20th-22nd. To join our trainers from around the world and about a thousand of your high-performing colleagues, go here for more information. Tickets are limited.

Listen Time: 18 Minutes

All too often, what holds salespeople back in terms of reaching their potential is not a missing sales skill or an improperly applied technique. More often than managers like to imagine, the problem is a failure of leadership.

Happy New Year!

Not only is it important to set goals for the New Year, but it also makes sense to take some time to reflect on the successes and setbacks from 2018. Below are four suggestions on how leaders can use insights and learnings from the year just past to shape their organizational growth plan for 2019.

Nick Tokman, also known as Sunshine as seen on Discovery Channel's Emmy-winning show, Deadliest Catch, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in finding your passion and choosing a direction for your life. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Dave Mattson, President and CEO at Sandler, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Hap Klopp, Founder and former CEO of The North Face and author of multiple books, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in the the face of digital disruption. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 30 Minutes

Bill Bartlett, Sandler trainer and author, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in branding your personal presence. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 20 Minutes

Microlearning lessons are sharp and concise, making it easy to revisit lessons as needed to reinforce new behaviors, attitudes and techniques, a critical factor for long-term change. Here are five reasons today’s human resource professionals are turning to microlearning, and specifically to Sandler’s strategic partner, Grovo.

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Kevin Leung, Sandler client and Salesperson of the Years, shows you how to succeed with the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques needed to be more successful in sales. Get the best practices collected from around the world.

Listen Time: 20 Minutes

If I asked a group of sales leaders, what motivates their salespeople, money is going to come up more often than not. And yes, money is important as it does pay the bills. And for some, money can be used as a scorecard. But are true high performers only motivated by money?

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David Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training, talks about how to rehearse your pitch with a prospect so they can sell your solution internally. If you can't be in an internal meeting, the next best thing is to have a white knight fighting on your behalf. Learn the best practices collected from over a thousand Sandler employees around the world.

Stephen J. Cloobeck is a self-made business leader with over 30 years of experience across every aspect of hospitality design, development, and deployment. As the original founder and former CEO and chairman of Diamond Resorts International - a business that grew to become one of the largest vacation ownership companies worldwide - Cloobeck made a name for himself as the industry's most adamant advocate for radical customer service, which he calls embracing the Meaning of Yes.

Eric Warner talks about the attitude, behaviors, and techniques that drive client success. Learn how to improve your client retention, drive more cross-sells and upsells, and grow your business by helping your clients succeed.

Brian Sullivan, VP of Enterprise Selling, and Mike Montague, VP of Online Learning discuss the challenges of selling into large organizations and how to overcome them in this Facebook Live session.

Mike Montague shares his thoughts on business development in this special bonus episode. Learn the problems and challenges of traditional marketing, advertising, and sales approaches, and what to do about it. You will discover how to add people and opportunities to your sales and marketing funnels without peddling, pushing or price-cutting. Why resort to gimmicks, when you can be a professional business developer?

Mike Crandall joins us to talk about the attitude, behaviors and techniques of transitioning the ownership of your business to the next generation of leaders. This is always a tough subject, but the future is coming and how you plan now will determine how bright that future will be. Learn how to succeed at transitioning your business to the next generation.

One of the most powerful strategies leaders can use to support their own effective decision-making is also one of the simplest: Build trusted members of your team, people who think differently than you do, into your decision-making process.

A lack of confidence when interacting with potential buyers is a sure way to sabotage a sales discussion. Here are four ways salespeople can improve upon their interpersonal skills and become more confident when dealing with prospects.

When we use the word “Excellent” to describe a business or a team, we’re talking about a certain specific way of doing business. In our experience, there are three clear criteria that consistently define organizational excellence

When you’re growing a small business, it’s important to put an emphasis on best utilizing the tools at your disposal. Regardless of your industry or experience, one of those tools should be social media. While there are endless uses for social media and I have previously discussed social selling tactics, below I have identified five tips that you can bring back to your business and begin to implement today for social media marketing.

The challenge of consistent growth is ever-present for small businesses. It’s difficult for all organizations, but especially for businesses that don’t have as many resources to devote to growth. For this reason, whenever you can develop or implement habits to improve your new business growth, you should do so. Below are six methods that you can deploy while networking to grow your team and its success.

The business world is not immune to change. Companies grow, and they shrink in size. They expand their market reach, sometimes, and contract it at other times. They introduce new products and services and discontinue products and services. And, they change the ways in which they create, promote, price, and deliver their products and services.

As organizations grow, they realize that there are numerous different ways to define success. A new business, for example, will be immensely satisfied the first year the operation returns a profit. On the other hand, a more established company may expect to see a specified rate of growth year over year. Defining what success means to you and establishing goals based upon these criteria can be an important step in monitoring your business’s development and making productive decisions based on the criteria that matter the most to you.

Like any new generation, there are differences in how Millennials interact with those around them, and what their expectations are in the workplace. What intuitive business leaders are noticing, however, is that there are tremendous benefits that members of this generation bring to the workforce. Their unique generational experiences and the skills they have gained can help them, and the organizations that hire them, excel.

Giving sales-related tasks their due diligence is part of growing your business. As business growth occurs, you have to divide your time amongst more tasks, more clients, more sales team members...you can see where this is going. The busier you get, the easier it is to fall into the trap of ‘busy work,’ or tasks that make you feel like you're accomplishing things but actually detract from business success.

Do you ever wish you could be a fly on the wall of your local competitor just to see what they do behind the scenes to grow their business? What are they doing that you aren't? You might be surprised to learn that it’s not just how they get new customers or their product or service innovation offerings that make them successful.

Small business owners tend to stay small because they do not install systems and processes into their business. Most owners want to hire "experienced" sales people. The mentality is to hire someone, teach them about their products and services, then expect the person to "go sell". What's the problem? If we hire experienced sales people, once they learn the product or service, they should be good to go, right?