Sandler Brief

How comfortable are you, on a scale of 1 to 10, when a prospect tells you “Let me think it over?” If you answered anything other than a 1, there could be a problem. You may want to consider implementing a classic Sandler selling rule: “A decision not to make a decision is a decision.”

The next time you hear a buyer say something that could be interpreted in more than one way – like “This looks pretty good,” or “Let me think about that,” or “You’re in the ballpark,” or even “Money is no object” – remove the mutual mystification.

No matter what kind of failure we experience – and there is going to be a lot of failure – we must be willing to create a lesson to match. That way, we can better understand what we did that worked and what we did that didn’t work, so we can avoid doing that again in the future.

Often, prospects don’t tell us the whole truth about their situation, especially at the beginning of the relationship. Why is that? It’s probably because they are concerned that they’re going to be taken advantage of, and they’re waiting for evidence that they can trust us with the facts of everything that is going on in their world.

Don't end the meeting for the prospect. If things get awkward, don't run for the door. Instead, find a way to ask the other person what is going on. You may be able to put the
meeting back together. Even if you can’t, you will know where you stand.

The best presentation that you’ll ever give is actually the one that the prospect never sees. 

When you run out of options and the buyer tells you it’s all over, don’t panic. Don’t offer to slash the price. Move into consultant mode!

What you just heard from the buyer may mean exactly what you think, but then again, it may not. So use STROKE-REPEAT-REVERSE and avoid mutual mystification.

One of David Sandler’s famous selling rules reads as follows: “Never ask for the order -- make the prospect give up.”

Sandler teaches sales professionals a six-stage model for pursuing and winning such opportunities -- a model that is based on and expands the classic Sandler Selling System. This model is worth studying, understanding, and implementing if you are tasked with generating revenue in the enterprise sales environment.