Sales Leadership Techniques

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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. 

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.