Sales Leaders

This article’s title is intended as the highest possible compliment. If you’re a sales leader, and your team is producing, I really do believe that’s because of your ability to do what an air traffic controller does.

This article focuses on the stages of the buyer’s journey that matter most to salespeople- Engagement, Consideration, Decision, and Advocacy. We must meet buyers wherever they are in this journey and not where we have traditionally started our own process.

There are a number of things that we can do to make sure that our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool is a great, salesperson-friendly resource, one that’s embraced by everyone on our team… as opposed to something that people dread using. Here are five simple tips that can help sales leaders in virtually any industry make that transition a reality.

Many sales leaders have a skill gap when it comes to coaching members of the sales team. Bridging that gap requires addressing a critical question.

Today I want to focus on what I believe to be the five most important skills a sales leader can develop over time to be successful in their role.

2022 will be a pivotal year for sales leaders. Here are four best practices we are currently sharing with our clients as they transition into 2022.

Human beings always have been and always will be driven to improve their own personal situation. As the leader, you must tap into that motivation.

High performance sales teams we work with are adopting a hybrid selling approach to leverage the best practices of both in-person and virtual selling.

Here’s a big question for sales leaders: How do you transfer the level of success that one team in your organization is delivering…so that everyone else on the sales side can find a way to deliver at the same level?

Sales leaders often tell us that they want salespeople to take a more proactive role. Fortunately, there is a simple fix for turning this dynamic around.

A big part of the sales leader’s job is to determine the measurable behaviors that will lead to success for a given salesperson, and to evaluate the numbers that connect to those behaviors.

The Sandler Research Center surveyed sales leaders and sales managers in Q4 2020 to gauge the impact of the global pandemic on sales processes and operations across a variety of industries.

Recently, the Sandler Research Center set out to discover current operation challenges and changes faced by sales leaders in a more digitally oriented selling environment. 

Sales leaders: If you could only track one performance metric to evaluate the performance of a member of your sales team, which one would you choose?

A Q&A with HubSpot and Suzie Andrews, Sandler Training

In today’s current market conditions, leaders need to accept that the success of their teams and their companies will rely heavily on striking a collaborative, coordinated balance between creative strategic thinking and effective implementation.

2020 was the year. Your company was going to experience exponential growth. The plans had been meticulously prepared and presented, blessed by the board, applauded by all business unit leaders around the table.

For leaders – and, let’s face it, for everyone else – the last few months have been nothing short of mind-bending. Most of us, in fact, are not even sure how to describe this period.

Hiring is one of the most important things we can do as a leader… and yet for many of the people, we work with, it remains something of a blind spot.

The companies that emerge stronger from a crisis all share one common strength –their sales and leadership teams are willing and able to move beyond their existing comfort zones, look to where new opportunities lie, set new priorities, and create new action plans.

During any crisis our instinct is to focus on the recent past, the ‘Old Normal’ and the immediate impact of the crisis itself. This fails to take into account the fact that the future is highly unlikely to be a return to business as usual but rather, a “New Normal.”

Here, then, are three tips that can help you become more successful as a sales leader in creating a predictable operational rhythm – a cadence – if you find yourself responsible for the performance of a remote sales team.

Mike Montague interviews Mike Michalowitz on How to Succeed at Putting Profit First.

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.

It’s the start of a new year, with new goals, new challenges, and new opportunities. Each sales team is unique … but every team leader in every industry is, we believe, likely to be interested in the answer to a critical question about the year 2020: What can we do to improve closing ratios and margins this year? Here are three proven strategies to consider from the Sandler leadership playbook.

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

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.

Of all the sales leaders we work with, we consistently hear the same adage: “I need to hold my salespeople accountable.” That's fine in theory, but the question that sales leaders must ask themselves first is, “What exactly am I holding them accountable to?”

Read Time: 6 Minutes

Mike Montague interviews Kevin Kremerer on How to Succeed at Sales Management Without Selling.

Listen Time: 22 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: 8 Minutes

Read on Forbes.com why many sales leaders fall into an unhealthy pattern of sales coordination instead of focusing on sales leadership strategies, and how you can get back to center for success.

Read Time: 5 Minutes

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.

Listen Time: 9 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: 13 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: 14 Minutes

Very often, managers who lead sales teams find themselves saying something like the following: “I have told them how to do X a hundred times, and it never seems to stick. I just don’t know what their problem is.” Or these managers may find themselves thinking, “Maybe I just hired the wrong person.” At such a moment, it makes sense to ask: Is the problem really with “them?” Or could at least part of the problem be with us?

Read Time: 6 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: 12 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: 13 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

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: 7 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: 8 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: 11 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, as well as, the companion video course. 

Listen Time: 12 Minutes

Chris Lewis is the CEO and Founder of LEWIS, one of the world's largest private communication companies. He joins us to talk about his new book and the attitude, behaviors, and techniques of top performing leaders in the new century. Learn how to succeed at leadership in the 21st century.

Learn how to effectively deal with difficult people and situations in this live session with Amy Woodall.

Many managers ask us for help in identifying the best way for them to support their new hires, so these employees can more rapidly reach the point where they become productive team members. The four strategies listed below will help you to do a better job of training and coaching new employees with little or no experience in the role – so they can make bigger contributions more quickly.

Learn how to improve your team's attitude, behavior and technique to improve their chances of success. Eric Dunn talks about how to breathe life and results into your sales team. Learn the best practices for improving effectiveness and efficiency. 

Learn how to empower your employees to take ownership and learn how to solve problems on their own. Clint Babcock talks about how to know which things to take off your plate and put them onto someone else's. You can't be great at everything, but you can build a team that is.

Learn how to apply the DISC personality framework to uncovering prospect's buying motivations or PAIN, in Sandler terms. Hamish Knox, Sandler trainer and author, returns to the podcast to talk with Dave Mattson about combining these two classic Sandler frameworks and selling strategies.

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?

Learn how to empower your employees to take ownership and learn how to solve problems on their own. Mike Jones talks about how to know which things to take off your plate and put them onto someone else's. You can't be great at everything, but you can build a team that is.

The digital revolution is innovative, inspiring, and even pervasive. We’ve come a long way in a short period of time, and many of the things we take for granted now weren’t even in the realm of possibility a few decades ago. As impressive as they are, the reach and impact of electronics when it comes to communication can have detrimental effects. Below, I identify three important elements that should always be involved in business relationships, no matter how advanced technology becomes.

Dave Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training and 6-time author, returns to the show to talk about his new book, The Road to Excellence, 6 Strategies for Building a Bulletproof Business! You will learn the attitudes, behaviors, and techniques of the top performing organizations, and how you can apply these principles to continuously improve your company.

To be a successful salesperson, one needs to be aggressive and goal-oriented. While important, these competitive traits can lead to a one-track mind and give sellers tunnel vision. If this goes unchecked, salespeople will ignore the pursuits of their team members and their organization. The sooner salespeople realize that fostering an environment of mutual success is the most advantageous approach, the better.

The new year is right around the corner and it’s filled with new opportunities and challenges. As we head into 2018, make sure that you’re as prepared as possible to lead your team to success. To be an effective manager, it’s important to fully understand your team dynamic. Below are five keys to doing just that.

Rule number 29, don't chase purple squirrels. Stay focused and stick to the agenda during sales meetings. People are pretty predictable and purple squirrels are defined as things that they throw onto a meeting that has nothing to do with the topic. 

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.

With the start of basketball season this month, it’s the perfect time to focus on building a great team. The phrase “dream team” gets thrown around a lot, but it’s most commonly referenced when discussing the incredible collection of talent that was assembled by USA Basketball for the 1992 Olympics. 

Rule #25: Don't let sales people leave training in the classroom. Use a collaborative, equal partnership inside and outside the training room. Here's the bottom line for sales leaders. You may have other people doing training for your organization and training your people. But, ultimately, you are still responsible for your team.

Rule number 22. Hey, people don't argue with their own data. Use self-discovery to break through performance barriers. I learned this a long time ago. People remember 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, but 90% of what they say and do.

Rule number 21. Empower your people to succeed without you. Coaching creates wisdom. Now think about that for a second. Coaching is one of the four hats of leadership and you're going to spend anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of your time as a coach.

Change management is the systematic approach to transitioning from one environment to another through the reassignment of resources, business processes, budget allocations, or other aspects that significantly alter a company or organization.

Rule #19: Train Your Team. Make sure they get the skills necessary to do the job. Listen leaders, training is one of the four hats of leadership. You're going to spend anywhere from 20 to 30% of your time in your training function. Now, do I train less or more if I have experienced people? Of course, that's why you have a 20 to 30% swing. The more experienced people that you have, maybe the less that you have to train in some of the basic stuff.

Use The Navy SEAL's 40% Rule To Achieve The Impossible. A common obstacle of success in sales leadership is getting stuck in a rut. Worry, fear and doubt are manufactured emotions that can limit a sales team’s ability to achieve their goals and potential. The rut is a comfort zone for you and your organization. Success can still happen in the rut, but according to the Navy SEAL’s 40% Rule, the big wins will never be achieved here. 

Rule #18: Create the Curbs on the Roadway. You know, too much supervision creates learned helplessness. Think about that as an example. Do you want to create learned helplessness on your team? Probably part of you does. The ego part of you wants everyone to ask you what to do next. 

As you progress through your career, there comes a time when you need to stop moving horizontally,  and begin to climb the ladder. When you realize where you are most valuable, and you decide to take the next step, that typically comes with the added responsibility of leadership.

You know as a leader, you're going to have many different roles throughout the day when you interact with your team and your coworkers. We call them the four hats of leadership. Those four hats are supervision, training, mentoring, and coaching. All four of them are equally as important. Supervision, goal setting, setting expectations, having daily conversations, sales funnel management. 

Joel Burstein, a Sandler trainer from Pittsburg, talks about his best practices for leading by example. Whether you are a first time manager or an experienced executive you are leading by example, whether you are intending to or not. Joel shares his attitudes, behaviors, and techniques for leading a team by setting a good example.

Did you know that the average tenure of a Sales VP is only between 24-32 months? They barely have time to unpack their bags and get settled before they are looking for another position. In the meantime, the company has not only lost its Sales VP but probably its best sales person as well. Why is this? And is there something that can be done to change this dynamic?

Rule #13. Be a comfort zone buster. There's no room at Complacency Inn. What does that mean? Well, have you ever run into a situation where somebody on your team was killing it? I mean doing everything that they had to do, above and beyond, things that they felt uncomfortable doing and things that they felt comfortable doing.  

As a manager or leader, you are tasked with many responsibilities. You must strive for success for each member of your team, for your company, and of course, for your clients. This balancing act can become overwhelming if you don’t properly prioritize your objectives and navigate the obstacles that combat effectiveness. Here are four key points to keep in mind in your quest for optimal efficiency.

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 #8: See People through Their Lens. Use DISC to understand how you and your people see the world so that you can lead more effectively. You know the DISC behavioral model will help you understand how to communicate more effectively with your team and anywhere else. You've got to understand and acknowledge how they interpret the world: how they communicate, how they want to be motivated, how they see the world, and where you then can adapt your style to match theirs.  

You know drama is one of those things that bring TV ratings. Everybody loves drama. Everybody loves to watch reality TV these days cause it's a freight train about to happen but we can't turn it off. People are attracted to drama. Just the natural way it is. But you don't want drama at your workplace. Drama is poison. 

Rule #6: Create self-sufficiency. Don't fix but explore. You know as sales leaders, how many times in a given week do people come in and say, "I've got a big call tomorrow. What would you do, Dave?" Intuitively, I know what to do, and every ounce of my being wants to say, "Do this, this, this and this." But the problem with that is that they didn't connect the dots. 

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?"

If you were to Google ‘servant leadership,’ you would come across a list of traits that included some or all of the following; listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, building community, and nurturing. While each of these components are valuable, the sheer number of them convolutes a fairly straight forward ideology.