Practice

Sales leaders are those who fulfill all the responsibilities of the job--supervision, training, mentoring, and coaching salespeople--while simultaneously interfacing with the rest of the organization in such a way as to support the achievement of the sales team's objectives.

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.

Odds are you have never heard of Jennifer Crow – but you should definitely know her story. She’s a Sandler practitioner like no other.

Create and circulate a documented playbook of best practices for anything and everything that occurs on an ongoing basis.

Attracting and keeping good salespeople is at the top of every sales manager’s list of priorities. The better we are at inspiring and holding on to great salespeople, the happier, the more engaged, and the more successful they will be.

Mike Montague interviews Andrew Gregson on How to Succeed at Pricing Your Products and Services. 

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.

Rick McDermott, Sandler trainer, 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: 19 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

When leaders hear the word “diversity,” they often think about gender, or race, or geography. Those are all important issues to consider, of course. But there’s an under-examined aspect of diversity that too many leaders overlook: behavioral styles. This aspect of diversity is the great unexplored topic the contemporary workplace. We find that managers who address this issue of behavioral diversity, and train and reinforce accordingly, benefit from a team with varying perspectives. That means better problem-solving, better communication, and better outcomes.

Chris joins us to talk about how to hold your team accountable and how to demand excellence from yourself and others. What does it mean to set a high bar, and how to do you pull it off without upsetting your team

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.

In today’s world, many managers don’t get to develop people the way they would like. It’s harder and harder to spend quality time with all the team members so managers must make sure each interaction delivers value for everyone. This means creating structure and clarity around all interactions with the team–or, as David Sandler put it, eliminating mutual mystification.

Communication is key in any relationship. Whether that relationship is with your spouse, your peers, your children, or your employees, it always comes back to a transfer of information, honesty, and respect.

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 #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.

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.

There’s an adage that rings true for sales careers, “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.” Proficient salespeople have some of the highest job satisfaction across all industries and can have very rewarding and lucrative careers. On the other side of the coin, selling — especially commission based selling — isn’t for everyone. Inexperienced or ineffective salespeople may have a hard time breaking into the profession.

Most salespeople hate role play even though it is one of the best tools to help them grow. Unfortunately, traditional role plays set up a salesperson to feel bad about themselves instead of learn. We strongly suggest that managers be the salesperson when role playing, especially when working with new reps, for two reasons. First, playing salesperson allows a manager to demonstrate the behavior they expect of their reps in front of a prospect. Second, a manager shows their team that they've still got the skills to sell in the field