Most savvy business owners know that if I’m going to make an investment and I’m not getting return on it, then I’m just throwing it away. A lot of times business owners may invest with us at Sandler and if their employees aren’t invested, it can feel like they’re throwing their money away. At Sandler we expect clients to experience a 10 for 1 return on investment on time, money, and energy that they invest. In order to take responsibility of this as trainers, we need to have a threefold commitment—we need to be believe and do what we speak with, we need the executive or manager to be in the trainer and engaged with the tools as well, and third is the commitment of the salesperson involved in the training—before we can go into tools about ROI we need to understand what a successful engagement requires.
The Sandler Selling System was built out of the frustrations experienced in sales. We helped develop content that shortcuts the learning curve of clients. This is true as trainers are actively practicing and becoming experts in the strategies and tactics that will bring ROI to their business models. Our training is based upon our experience using the techniques to close business and demonstrate success, when we don’t use the techniques it doesn’t work. For a Sandler trainer to be successful they need to show proficiency in the process itself. In that way, an engagement in a sales call should be a demonstration of the Sandler System and its functionality as a sales process.
This system requires unlearning in order to replace the records that might have been learned over time by individuals who train by replication as opposed to intention when it comes to their origins in business. In order to guarantee ROI we need to build out exactly what is required to start out right with the system. The first tool, the AB Journal, is a required puzzle piece in order to make success relevant and measurable to your world. We need to have daily goals with regard to how we’ll act and how we’ll feel and measure the success of these intentions. The more success that we experience the more we learn to believe in ourselves. An AB Journal can really motivate you to develop in a positive way and move toward change that will influence your professional and personal life.
As Sandler trainers we thrive on return on investment. As we see competencies develop and teams see returns it validates their own decisions and validates what we have to offer and what we bring to their team in our engagement. In order to set up the best success for our clients we implement 5 tools to build out success and guaranteed ROI with clients.
1. AB Journal
In the beginning of the day take 90 seconds to determine what your goals are and what your attitude must be in order to reach it. At the end of the day take 90 seconds to 2 minutes and assess how you did and allows you to determine whether the problems are related to our attitude or our behaviors. After gauging our day we need to grade ourselves on a scale of 1-10 in the categories of how we did on our Role side and how we feel on our Identity side.
2. A cookbook
We need to track how we manage our current customers or clients. We need to track the activities that we do that are related to hunting as well as maintaining and growing current relationships. We need to determine what the activities (cold calls, walk-ins, appointments) are that are most important for us and how many of these behaviors we need to do each day, each week in order to guarantee that we set ourselves for success relative to how we see our goals.
3. The 30-Second Commercial
If we cannot get a prospect to admit to a challenge or a compelling reason to invite us in, then we are wasting our time and our prospect’s time. In order to explore and discover challenges we must develop a template that speaks directly to the person who is in front of us and is meaningful, which allows them to buy into the discovery process. It must be a story around emotional words (frustrated, upset, disappointed, worried, anxious, concerned, angry, annoyed). The emotional words build a compelling 3rd party narrative which brings them into the compelling conversation we offer. We are looking for the gap between where they want to be and where they are today. The final piece is the take-away, “I’m not sure that these are concerns you’ve been having?”
4. Written Upfront Contracts
An upfront contract is a verbal mutual agreement as to what we’re going to accomplish and the potential outcomes of our meeting. We want to use this contract to create a clear future after the conversation. After we’ve mastered the upfront contract, we want to build a template of an upfront contract to send out before any meetings that we have in the future. This e-mail should be a replication of the transparency and intentions of the upfront contract and what expectations we may have as we move into the meeting. We need to write out what we’ll be looking: naturally, you’ll be looking to know about us and who we are. Obviously, I need to know what your goals and expectations are, and what you would like to gain out of the meeting. Typically, one of two things will happen out of our meeting tomorrow. One is we may not be a fit, I hope that’s not the case, but if it doesn’t make sense for us to schedule another meeting please let me know. If it does make sense for us to schedule another meeting, we’ll do it tomorrow while I’m there. Please let me know if there are any other expectations you have or if there is anything else you’d like to address.
5. The Ultimate Contract
A lot of salespeople want to do proposals and quotes. An ultimate contract: mutual agreed to understanding of what happens after we do a presentation. If you want to know the future, bring it to the present. Once we’ve done work developing we need to understand and bring our prospects to the present and ask, “After we do that, what do you see happening next?” This sort of question probes to the deeper intent of the engagement and allows us to have a conversation prior to the moment of closing a commitment. It’s an upfront expectation that brings the potentials of the future into the present and stops us from continuously sending out proposals in hope that it miraculously turns itself into business.
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