Leadership Development

The Sandler Summit is a powerful two-day hybrid event where successful business professionals across all industries learn, collaborate, and network.

Many mentors (and mentees) resist asking an all-important question about the sales leader’s role: “Where are things most likely to go wrong?” And the answer is: “Wherever people are assuming that they already have all the answers.”

The global sales space has been completely transformed over the last year with a virtual selling environment prevailing for almost all sales organizations. Sandler’s research reveals that 71.4% of participating sales managers and sales leadership report that their sales process has changed as a result of transitioning to remote commercial trading. Unfortunately, 63.2% don’t have a plan.

Mike Montague interviews Cassie Kramer on How to Succeed at Keeping Your Financial House in Order.

Short on time? No problem. Here is our 120-second overview of three critical areas where we are seeing the most productive sales leaders set their teams up for success in 2021.

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.

Leadership is more than learning the characteristics and habits of effective leaders. Truly effective leaders ensure the organization has clear direction and an infrastructure which will enhance the probability of the organization successfully achieving their vision.

As a sales leader, you're measured by your team’s performance. Ultimately, you're judged based on their ability to generate revenues sufficient to meet or exceed your corporate goals. So no matter how good you may have once been as a seller, it’s important to understand that selling is not your job now … and you can't expect to generate enough revenue to meet your team’s quotas simply by acting as a player-coach.

As sales leaders, we need to accept that we will ultimately be judged on our ability to hire and retain people who are both willing and able to do the job of selling. If either of those elements is missing in a sales hire that happens on our watch, we’re not doing our job.

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If you are a Sandler client, and you’ve never attended a Summit, let me share four powerful reasons to consider joining us in Florida March 20-22.

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If you want a better team, become a better manager. Dave Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training interview John Rosso, Sandler author and David H. Sandler award-winner, about effective sales leadership. What are the roles of a good leader?

Dave Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training, talks to Tom Niesen about selling the Sandler way and the four different hats that sales leaders have to wear. Learn why each is crucial to your team's success.

John Baldoni is the author of 12 books, including Lead with Purpose. He is also an executive coach and educator. You can find his work at JohnBaldoni.com.

Dianna Booher is the author of 47 books, including Communicate Like A Leader, and founder of Booher Research. The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe.

Rule 12: Manage individuals; lead a team. There's no substitute for personal attention. Listen, every human wants to be paid attention to. Everyone wants this one-on-one connection. They want eye contact, they want one-on-one time, they want you to pay attention. This is true at home. Kids want your attention. They want you to ask questions. They want you to understand the deal. 

As a leader, there’s a constant pressure to ensure your leadership approach stays up-to-date. Every year, the culture of the office deviates slightly from the year prior and the way that individuals want to learn and be led,  shifts. Sometimes these changes are drastic, and other times they are slight. No matter the degree of change, it’s imperative that you are cognizant of the shift and are prepared to be a great resource to everyone who looks to you for guidance and mentorship.

Rule #4: Become a servant leader. Put the needs of your team first. In today's world, often times we've got to make sure that with all the things going on we're ultimately judged based on is our team producing? You're the leader. Senior Execs aren't looking around saying; "Hey, person number one, person number three." No. They look at you and say; "Is your team producing?"

I'm often asked by managers, "How do I motivate my people?" While I always appreciate the question, it's the wrong question to ask. The reason being is that if we must motivate our people as managers, we're working too hard. The reality is that the best people don't need motivation. Inspiration yes, but not motivation.

Holding your people accountable is simple. In working with sales leaders around the world, accountability isn’t easy because those leaders possess one of three self-limiting beliefs that cripple their accountability program.

This year's theme is Vision Driven Success. It is two days packed with non-stop training on sales, management or enterprise-level selling. Each trainer will bring real-world tactics, strategies, and ground-level tools that you can immediately implement in your business. 

What does it take to be an effective leader? Do the skills that make you an effective manager—planning, organization, and communication—make you an effective leader? Or, does it take something else—something more?

The DISC model is based on your behavior. It clarifies how you prefer to do things based on two factors. Are you more extroverted or introverted? And, are you more people or task oriented? Based on those preferences, you end up with four possible behavioral styles.