THE SANDLER SALES BOOTCAMP
DAY ONE
The Success Triangle
A model for optimum performance
- Techniques are not enough: Uncover hidden barriers to success in selling high-tech solutions and learn how to overcome them.
- Understand the three factors that dictate your success or failure in a sales role: Essential secrets from consistently successful technology salespeople.
- Exercise I: Access your selling style — Are you closing as many deals as you could?
The Sandler Selling System: Strategy
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The art of mutual agreement
- Understand how to lead the buyer/seller dance – Participate in a humorous look at why traditional sales practices leave your prospects cold.
- Learn why 20% of technology sales people make 80% of the sales.
- Discover the tricks employed by savvy buyers and how to avoid getting trapped.
- Stop wasting time sending literature that isn't ready, preparing proposals that can't win, and doing tons of free consulting.
- Learn how to formulate a plan. It's a battle of the plans – the buyer has a plan. Do you?
- Learn how to customize a sales plan for each call and how to adjust it on the fly.
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"We used to get tied up in trials and proofs of concept that meandered for months. I left the training and the very next week used the concept of the Ultimate Contract on two deals in the pipeline. Both came in at over $500K, in this quarter and they would have never made it in this quarter if I hadn't tried this new approach."
Silvio Trembel
Oracle
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Making the First Minutes Count – Every Time
New science for creating a climate of trust and gaining solid commitment from your prospect at the beginning of the sales cycle
- While many professionals will balk at the idea, style is literally more important than substance. Research results illustrate the importance of the emotional impact we have on other people and how it influences their
acceptance of our messages.
- Learn tactics to build rapport – most sales people put 99% of their effort into the 7% factor. The other 93% deals with building credibility and trust quickly.
- Understand how to create effective Up Front Contracts – a low-key way to seize the initiative and take leadership of the buyer/seller dance.
- Find out exactly what to listen for in the buyer's initial reactions – and how to respond.
- Earn your toughest prospect's respect from the first minute.
- Exercise II: Set your own Up Front Contract
Help Your Prospect Discover Their Reasons to Buy
Buying motives and how to uncover them
- Discover why prospects are often reluctant to share the information you need to help them.
- Learn questions to uncover your prospect's personal hot buttons.
- Develop skill and comfort in getting to real issues and business drivers.
- Understand the food chain of value and how to position yourself as a consultant in your customer's eyes.
- Learn how to help prospects to see your products and/or services as a high-value solution to their business problem.
- Grasp how to conduct a business dialogue with senior executives, outside of the MIS department.
- Exercise III: The Pain Funnel
When the Competitor's Price is Lower
When and how to talk about investment issues
- Learn why high-tech sales people leave money on the table.
- Understand why most people are uncomfortable talking about money.
- Discover how to get budget information early in the process.
- Find out who really controls the purse strings.
- Hear how to turn 'price' and 'cost' conversations into 'value' and 'ROI' conversations.
- Gather common negotiating ploys used by trained buyers and how to counter them.
- Learn how to say "NO" and keep the deal alive.
Shorten your Sales Cycle by Staying in Control
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Co-building the decision process
- Discover how to use the information you uncover to co-build solutions with your customer.
- Find out how to create solutions that maximize perceived fit and value.
- Create the single most effective barrier to competition.
- Learn how to use 'mini-contracts' to stay in control of every step of the process.
- Receive strategies for measuring the customer's commitment to advance the sales cycle.
- Most sales professionals ask about decision-making authority, but in a way that's sure to trigger the 'Gatekeeper Response.' Learn a high probability way to uncover the true decision process and to gain
access to decision makers.
- Hear how to drive consensus in multiple decision-makers scenarios.
- Obtain a fail-safe way to make your forecast accurate and reliable.
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"Our sales cycle prior to this program was 18 months, on average. The use of the system and the decision to make every effort to enter accounts at a higher level, has reduced that cycle - in the last 20 deals - to LESS THAN 60 DAYS!
Discounting, in the mean time is down 15% - an unexpected benefit"
Randy Atherton, VP Sales
Kana Communications
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DAY TWO
No More Caveman Closes
State-of-the-art closing tactics that work
- Learn how to know when to close.
- Establish ways to close users vs. managers vs. financial decision makers.
- Discover closing tactics when selling to committees.
- Hear how to beat end-of-quarter pressure.
Countering the Competition
How to keep customers from using other software, hardware or service vendors to squeeze you
- Uncover a prospect's likelihood of deflecting to the competition.
- Receive techniques to avoid feature-to-feature combat.
- Make the buyer see your solution as a custom fit.
- Learn how to know if you're being used to get a better deal with someone else.
- Gather strategies for dislodging prospects from a fixation on larger, more entrenched competitors.
The Sandler Selling System: Tactics
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Non-traditional tactics that give you the edge
- Discover a fresh set of tactics that put you in control of the process, without sounding like a salesman.
- Learn how to handle the toughest high-tech sales situations.
- Assess your current responses to your most common objections, stalls and put-off's.
- Break old habits and make new ones that are sure to pay off.
- Gauge your listening skills.
- Find out why questions are the answer and answers aren't.
- Incorporate a tactic to create a role reversal and get your prospect convincing you.
- Firm up any agreement you reach with your prospect.
- Learn how what you know can hurt you — how product knowledge is abused and how to use it
effectively.
- Exercise IV: Stump the Trainer — Bring your toughest and most frustrating questions and hear how a seasoned sales pro handles them with ease.
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"At first I found it challenging to make the transition to the systematic approach that Sandler champions.
But when sales grew by 60% in the first year, it was easy to trace this success to the simplicity, logic, and common sense of the Sandler Selling System.
I reduced my working hours by 25% and increased my income by more than 100%!"
Chuck Black, Sales Rep
Borland International
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Dealing with the Toughest Sales Scenarios
What to do when it all goes wrong
- Discover a test to determine when 'No' means 'Maybe.'
- Learn a tactic to handle even hostile prospects – when under attack, fall back.
- Find out how to regain control of a sales call that's not going well.
- Understand how to get the attention of prospects who won't call you back.
- Learn what to do when deals get stuck, and you're missing your forecast.
- Exercise V: The Firing Range — Apply the new tactics you've learned and hone them to your products and services.
Professional Prospecting
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Techniques to fill your pipeline with good leads
- Define the target market.
- Learn about efficient entry point selection (a strategic decision).
- Discover how to warm up cold calls – a higher pay-off, researched based model for outbound calls.
- Find out how to build your own optimized first call approach.
- Discover methods of access and influence.
- Receive four tricks to use voicemail and gatekeepers to your advantage.
- Eliminate peaks and valleys in your pipeline.
- Realize how to prioritize opportunities – 90-day warrior vs. elephant hunter.
- Understand how to get buyers interested, even when they say they aren't.
- Follow up on fresh leads with hyper efficiency.
- Exercise VI: Develop your own 'Sales Readiness Pain/Gain Toolkit.'
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"We started the transformation in Q4. In an eight-week period, 260 people in the North American field force completed Sandler's High Tech Sales Bootcamp.
In the year prior, we did three deals which had a value of $1M or greater. In the year of the initial training, we did 17 deals of $1M or better in product. We are in our second year after the initial programs, and we are on track to do a minimum of 35 $1M+ deals."
Dave Malmstedt, Vice President of the Americas
Candle Corporation, A Division of IBM
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