The Sandler Training Hour
Join Jim and Jason Stephens for weekly insights on the Sandler Selling System, navigating the modern sales landscape, and overcoming real-world business challenges.
A Sandler Trainer is a salesperson. We lead by example and talk from experience.
Reach out to us: Jason.Stephens@sandler.com
Visit our website: https://go.sandler.com/crossroads/
Episodes
133 episodes
Stop Wanting the Sale More Than Your Prospect Does
You ran a great call. The prospect agreed with everything. Then the deal sat for three weeks, and you found yourself wanting the sale far more than they did.Deals stall when the buyer's pain is not strong enough in the present to make ch...
Why the Phone Gets Heavier Every Day You Do Not Call
You know you should call that past client. You have known it for three years. Every day you do not, the phone gets heavier.We think the problem is rarely skill. When the reason behind a prospecting call is self-serving (find more money, ...
The Fifth Week of the Month You Keep Wasting
Every few months the calendar hands you a fifth week, the one that falls outside your standing meetings, and most of it disappears into catch-up work before you notice it arrived. That extra week is the most strategic time you get all quarter. ...
The Q4 Habit That Keeps You Behind Your Number
You set a number back in January. Now Q4 is here, and the gap between that number and where you actually are is staring back at you. The instinct is to either beat yourself up or stay busy with whatever is easiest to check off. Both feel produc...
Stop Treating AI Like a Smarter Google
You tried AI, walked away unimpressed, and quietly filed it under overhyped. Most salespeople did the same. The tool is not the problem. The problem is that you are treating a machine like it is intelligent, when the intelligence in the exchang...
The Small Stumbles That Cost You the Sale
You lost the deal, and looking back it is easy to point to the one moment it fell apart. The prospect who went quiet. The price that scared them off. The close you fumbled. Hindsight makes it look like a single mistake. It almost never is.<...
What Avoiding the Uncomfortable Sales Calls Is Costing You
You know the calls you should be making. The past client you have not spoken to in a year. The prospect who went quiet after a strong conversation. You keep finding a reason to make them tomorrow, and tomorrow keeps moving.This week we g...
Why You Keep Chasing Prospects Who Never Decide
You present your best work, the prospect nods along, and then the conversation goes cold. You follow up once, twice, and eventually they land in a pile you check on for the next nine months. In this episode we look at why that happens, and it u...
Why Prospects Shut Down When You Try to Overcome Their Objections
You had the answer ready. You delivered it cleanly. And the prospect pulled further away. That pattern has a cause: every time you argue with a hesitation, you confirm the stereotype the buyer walked in with before you said a word.This w...
Why Prospects Keep Saying They Need to Think It Over
The call goes well. The prospect nods along, says it all makes sense, then asks for the weekend to think it over. You follow up, they go quiet, and your pipeline fills with maybes that stretch your sales cycle another month.This week we ...
Why Your Sales Conversations End in Assumptions Instead of Agreements
You walk out of a first meeting and something nags at you. Was that person being straight with you? You have no evidence either way, so you fill the gap with a guess. Your prospect is doing the same thing about you.This week we get into ...
Why Prospects Take Your Free Advice and Never Buy
A prospect says the words every seller wants to hear: I need help. You show them everything you know, they thank you for the advice, and the deal goes nowhere. If that pattern sounds familiar, this episode names what is causing it.This w...
Why You Chase Prospects Instead of Asking for the Next Step
You avoid pushing because you do not want to look like the stereotypical salesperson. So you soften, you hedge, and you leave calls without a firm next step. Then you spend the week chasing. The problem is not that you are too aggressive. It is...
Why One Hard Conversation Never Fixes the Problem
You finally had the hard conversation. You said the thing you had been avoiding. A week later the same behavior is back, and now you are bracing to have the exact same talk all over again.This week we get into the part of hard conversati...
Why Your Sales Activity Isn't Getting the Results You Expected
You are doing the activity. Day after day, the calls and the follow-up and the pipeline work; the results you expected never show up. And the advice you keep hearing is the worst advice there is: try harder.This week I tell a story from ...
Why Buyers Won't Open Up to You (And Won't Refer You Either)
You explain your solution clearly. You make your strongest case. The buyer nods, goes quiet, and the deal never moves. The instinct is to sharpen the pitch; the fix runs the other direction.This week we sit with one idea: for a buyer to ...
Why Prospects Take Your Free Advice and Buy Nothing
You demonstrate your expertise in the first meeting, the prospect nods along, and then nothing happens. No decision, no follow-up, no deal; just a buyer who walked away with your best thinking for free. We call it unpaid consulting, and it may ...
Why Buyers Stall When You Solve Their Problem Too Soon
You run a strong call. You hear the problem, you explain how you would fix it, you watch the prospect nod along. Then nothing. The deal that felt alive goes quiet, and you are left wondering what changed.On this episode we look at the br...
Why Salespeople Avoid the Conversations They Need to Have
There is a conversation you have been putting off. You know which one. Maybe it is the cold call you have been postponing for a week; maybe it is the awkward check-in with a stalled prospect; maybe it is the honest conversation with a team memb...
Why More Sales Calls Are Not Making You Better
You finish another sales call. You move on to the next meeting. Two weeks later, you cannot recall what you committed to or what the buyer actually said about budget; you also cannot say whether the call went well by any measure beyond gut feel...
How to Disarm a Frustrated Client Without Making It Worse
A client comes at you upset. Maybe a deal went sideways, maybe a promise got missed, maybe they just had a hard week and you are the closest target. Your instinct is to defend, explain, or jump straight to fixing it. That instinct is the proble...
How to Stop Accommodating Prospects Who Will Not Commit
You spend ten hours qualifying a prospect; they return your calls, agree to the next meeting, never quite say yes. You tell yourself one more conversation gets them across the line. The relationship feels good, so you keep going.On this ...
How to Stop Running Your Sales Day on Autopilot
You know your sales routine has become predictable; you also know that some part of you keeps making excuses for why now is not the time to change anything.That gap is the topic of this episode. We talk about why salespeople and sales le...
Why Your Sales Team Resists Scripts (And How It's Hurting Your Close Rate)
Most salespeople will tell you they have a process. What they actually have is a set of habits that work often enough to feel like success; that is not a system. In this episode, we make the case for the sales playbook most reps resist, and we ...
Stop Pitching, Start Diagnosing: What a Hospital Stay Taught Us About Discovery Calls
Your last lost deal probably was not lost in the proposal. It was lost in the discovery call, when you heard a prospect describe a problem and assumed you already knew what they meant.Jim is back from an unexpected hiatus -- a sepsis dia...