Less than 35% of salespeople are currently hitting their targets, according to Gartner.

With the new year on the horizon, these next few weeks are crucial to improving those numbers in 2025.

Watch an inspiring and insightful session with Michael Norton, Executive Vice President of Sandler Enterprise. In just 30 minutes, gain actionable strategies to finish the year strong and start 2025 even stronger.

Discover Sandler’s secrets to:

• Maintaining a healthy and balanced sales funnel

• Winning deals of all sizes with confidence

• Cultivating a winner’s attitude in every situation

Master the crucial skills you need to engage multiple contacts, influence the decision-maker’s table, and close your most complex sales.

Watch Now

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With buying committees growing larger, salespeople must address the unique needs of each stakeholder on the buyer’s team.

Watch this eye-opening webinar with award-winning Sandler trainer, John Rosso, CEO of Sandler by Performance Partners and best-selling author of Prospect the Sandler Way. 

At this Sandler Insider Session, you’ll discover how to:

• Map out the buying process and identify all influencers, gatekeepers, champions and economic buyers
• Reduce the risk of single-point failure by building multi-threaded relationships
• Differentiate between a coach and a champion – and why it matters
• Strategically connect with key stakeholders
• Overcome blockers and adversaries

Master the crucial skills you need to engage multiple contacts, influence the decision-maker’s table, and close your most complex sales.

Watch Now

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Mark Foley, VP of Sales, Sandler Enterprise

The Elite Seller is to the sales profession what the Navy SEAL is to military operations, or the Hall of Fame inductee is to a given sporting discipline. These individuals rise above their peers due to a unique blend of talent, expertise, and relentless commitment. They represent a small fraction of the sales force, and their success is rooted in intrinsic motivation, well-honed skills, and disciplined execution. These are the top-tier sales professionals who demonstrate unparalleled skill, adaptability, and results-driven performance – the ones who reliably deliver at high-impact, high-stakes moments.

Much like becoming an elite professional athlete, ballerina, or chef, achieving this level of excellence requires extraordinary time, effort, and dedication – not to mention significant mentorship and coaching support. What follows are some thoughts on the traits, skills, and training strategies necessary to cultivate Elite Sellers, and the delicate interplay between innate talents and learned competencies of which sales leaders must be made aware, based on Sandler’s cumulative experience coaching and developing over 30,000 sellers annually.

Are Elite Sellers Born or Made?

Becoming an Elite Seller means leveraging both innate talents and learned competencies:

Innate Talents: These personality-driven traits, such as ambition, discipline, and learning agility, often serve as the foundation for elite performance. People either have them or they don’t.

Learned Competencies: These include technical sales skills, customer engagement strategies, and situational adaptability, abilities that are cultivated through structured training, deliberate practice, and ongoing coaching.

So, the best answer to the question of whether Elite Sellers are born or made is – Yes. Certain innate talents must be there. At the same time, learned skill acquisition is non-negotiable.

In this sense the development of an Elite Seller is exactly the same as the development an aspiring athlete into an Olympic champion or a dedicated culinary student into a Michelin-starred superstar chef.

What Are the Key Attributes of an Elite Seller?

Elite Sellers consistently bring to the table the following attributes. Note that the first group of attributes falls into the category of “born with,” and the second group falls into the category of “learned over time.”

Talents (Innate Characteristics)

Motivation & Ambition: A relentless drive to succeed underpinned by focus and discipline.

Resourcefulness: The ability to adapt, solve problems, and think on their feet.

Accountability: A willingness to own their actions and results.

Competencies (Learned Skills/Tactics)

Company-Specific, Market-Specific, Person-Specific Messaging. Building buyer trust through tailored, engaging communication.

Creating/Securing Appropriate Next Steps and Fulfilling Sales Process Exit Criteria. Taking control of conversations while fostering buyer comfort and openness. Guiding conversations rather than guiding them.

Pain Diagnosis. Conducting thorough discovery to identify pain points and quantify their impact.

Delivering Personal Value. Demonstrating and delivering value from early on in the relationship through insightful recommendations and tactful challenges.

Keeping It Real. Aligning buyer objectives with realistic timelines and actionable steps.

Being the Grownup in the Room. Managing objections, decision criteria, and stakeholder dynamics with poise.

What I just shared with you may be considered the 30,000-foot view of the Competencies terrain. Closer to ground level, critical skills Elite Sellers master and refine over time include:

• Establishing mutual agreements with buyers on meeting purpose and outcomes.
• Confidently navigating challenging group settings or one-on-one discussions.
• Driving the buyer’s understanding of the cost of inaction versus the value of a solution.
• Proactively addressing potential obstacles, such as procurement or legal hurdles.
• Closing sales as a seamless outcome of a well-executed process.

What Are the Core Functions of the Elite Seller?

Elite Sellers excel across the entire sales funnel, seamlessly managing every phase of the buyer’s journey. Their role includes the following core functions:

• Building rapport and chemistry with diverse buyers.
• Conducting in-depth discovery to uncover client pain points.
• Driving conversations that reveal value-based solutions.
• Consistently and effectively managing challenges related to timelines, decision criteria, and stakeholder alignment.
• Closing deals as the natural culmination of a well-executed process (not as a result of “closing tricks.”)

Their adaptability and precision in performing these functions mirror the artistry of a prima ballerina performing a complex routine or a master chef orchestrating a multi-course meal.

Elite Sellers are not created overnight any more than elite chefs, athletes, scientists, or musicians are created overnight. Just like those who sacrifice and struggle to achieve elite status in other professions, their journey requires:

• Rigorous Training: Regular skill development sessions tailored to real-world scenarios.
• Ongoing Coaching: Focused reviews of calls and deals to refine techniques.
• Deliberate Practice: Continuous reinforcement of best practices.

Like any other form of mastery, sales mastery demands exceptional dedication and effort.

Opportunities for sellers to engage directly with buyers are increasingly rare, underscoring the need for elite execution in every interaction. Organizations must invest in identifying and developing their Elite Sellers to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. With the right combination of innate talent, structured training, and disciplined practice, the odds are that someone on your team can rise to elite status—delivering extraordinary value to buyers and achieving unparalleled results.

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Driving Growth: Sandler Names Marni Smith as Vice President of Franchise Development

Sandler, the global leader in sales, leadership, and management training, is pleased to announce Marni Smith as its new Vice President of Franchise Development. Marni brings over 23 years of expertise in franchise growth, strategic planning, and business development to her role, furthering Sandler’s mission to empower franchise owners with innovative training solutions.

As VP of Franchise Development, Marni will oversee the strategic expansion of Sandler’s global franchise network. Her focus will include identifying growth opportunities, building relationships with prospective franchisees, and ensuring new franchise owners are equipped to thrive. Marni’s proven ability to support franchisees at every stage of their journey makes her a pivotal addition to Sandler’s leadership team.

“We are excited to welcome Marni to Sandler,” said David Mattson, Executive Chairman and President of Franchise, Sandler. “Her extensive background in franchise development and dedication to helping entrepreneurs succeed align perfectly with our vision for growth. Under her leadership, we look forward to growing our network and delivering the transformative impact of Sandler’s training to more businesses worldwide.”

Marni has held senior roles in franchise development across multiple industries, showcasing a consistent track record of delivering results and supporting franchisee success. As a franchise industry veteran, she has actively contributed to the leading franchise associations and franchise consultant organizations.

“I am thrilled to join Sandler and be part of a company that sets the standard for excellence in sales and leadership training,” said Marni Smith. “Franchise ownership with Sandler offers professionals an incredible opportunity to make a difference in their communities while building a thriving business. I am excited to contribute to expanding this impactful network.”

For those interested in learning more about franchise opportunities with Sandler, visit sandler.com/franchising.

About Sandler

Sandler is a world leader in innovative sales, leadership, and management training. For over 50 years, Sandler has provided its unique brand of training to sales professionals and organizations of all sizes, helping them achieve greater success and reach their full potential. With over 200 locations in 24 countries, Sandler continues to expand and innovate, providing state-of-the-art training solutions that make a real difference. Visit sandler.com.

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In this paper, We’ll look at three complementary, ongoing strategies that sales professionals (that is, leaders and front-line contributors), can pursue to address this common challenge. Our experience is that teams generally do best when they adopt these strategies both sequentially and concurrently: deploying the first strategy on its own , then deploying the first in combination with the second, and finally deploying all three strategies over time, on an ongoing basis.

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In This Issue:

Drama, Drama, Drama

By David Mattson

Have you ever noticed how most issues that cause major problems in your world could have been solved faster, or avoided entirely, if there had just been solid communication up front? Have you ever wondered why that communication doesn’t happen?

Sandler: It’s Like Golf Lesson For Your Sales Game

By Scott Bliss

Like a lot of great golfers, many salespeople operate with natural talent. But even the best golfers, and the best salespeople, need training and coaching to refine their approach, stay consistent, and perform at an optimal level. This is where Sandler comes in, offering a structured, behavior driven approach to selling and leadership. Clients tell me that taking a Sandler session is a lot like taking golf lessons from a pro, in that the real challenge comes after the lesson — in the real-world application of what you’ve learned out on the practice course.

Twelve Angry Buyers: The Modern Sales Jury

By Michael Norton

If you’ve ever seen the 1957 Henry Fonda film Twelve Angry Men, you probably remember just how intense this classic courtroom drama gets. As the story unfolds, we see and hear the entirety of a twelve-man jury’s emotional deliberations in a difficult criminal case. Most of the motion picture is set in a single room, a room in which tension and disagreements escalate with every passing second. The decision of the jurors will determine the fate of a young man who’s on trial for murder. Their verdict must be unanimous. Coalitions emerge and collapse. Tempers flare.

Grow or Die, 2.0: The Modern Sales Leader’s Upgrade

By Craig Dempster

Whether they realize it or not (and many don’t), today’s sales leaders find themselves at a crossroads. They must either adapt to a world of accelerated technological change and increased buyer-side complexity… or become outdated and ineffective. In other words, their team’s performance, and their own professional survival, depend on their ability to adapt and transform.

Sales Leaders: Is It For You Or Is It For Them?

By Emily Shaw

Sales leaders are often caught between what may sometimes seem like two conflicting forces: the responsibility to ensure the team hits its numbers, and the responsibility to engage constructively with individual members of the sales team on a personal level. Many sales leaders try to balance these responsibilities with what they tell themselves is a critical, but necessary, “tough love” approach.

Today’s Technology Is More Than Just A Sales Tool – It’s A Teammate

By Jordan Ledwein

It can be easy for us to view the latest AI tool or sales technology as an added tool in our toolbox – as something we might occasionally use to help us improve our odds of closing the deal. But is that really the best way to look at these brand-new resources? Is that how we should be thinking about AI? As another tool?

Case Study: Twenty-Five Years And Counting

By Ken Harris

How did Sandler help accelerate growth from $10 million to $110 million in just five years? How did Sandler empower one of the world’s biggest medical instruments manufacturers to expand market share … in a shrinking market? What makes a guy with a reputation for turning around troubled teams decide to work with Sandler for a quarter of a century … at multiple organizations?

Why Most Sales Teams Have No Idea What The Buying Criteria Are

By Emily Yepes

Whenever I start working with a new client, I see a few recurring, predictable reasons the team’s sales process doesn’t work as efficiently as it could. Perhaps the most common of these problems is the selling side’s lack of clarity about the buying side’s real-world criteria for approving the purchase

decision. It’s sad but true: Most sales teams have no idea what a given B-to-B opportunity’s real world buying criteria are.

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David Mattson

The game has changed.

Team selling in the business-to-business environment used to be an occasional thing, a weapon we saved for special, complex, high-stakes situations. Now, if we expect our team to succeed, it’s standard operating procedure.

Why? Because today’s B-to-B buyers are making most of their decisions collaboratively, as part of a flexible, data-sensitive, constantly-adapting team. Even in situations where one person is technically responsible for a purchase, that individual is connected to a network of communication platforms that enable internal players to affect how, when, and why any purchase is finalized. Think about it: Isn’t that how we decide what to buy for our organization? By interacting with the various stakeholders, hearing what they have to say, and reviewing the best data available?

That’s exactly what our buyers are doing.

Today’s connected B-to-B buyers are more cautious, which means selling cycles are often stretching out for longer than we might like. We know that. But what we may not have realized is that, as a practical matter, there is typically no longer any single “decision maker” — which is how we may be used to thinking about selling. Instead, there’s an ongoing internal conversation involving lots of people, a conversation about the best possible buying decision.

If we expect to be part of that conversation, we will want to start from the premise that today’s B-to-B buyers buy in packs. And that means we need to sell in packs.

This is a paradigm shift for many sellers. We may be more comfortable with the old paradigm: the one-on-one (me talking to a decision maker) or one-on-two model (me talking to a decision maker and an influencer). In this model, moving an opportunity through our sales process was kind of like a job interview. Sometimes we were being interviewed by one person. Sometimes we were being interviewed by two people. But however the interviews played out, those one or two people were the ones we needed to interact with if we wanted the job.

Even though we got used to that dynamic, and made that paradigm work for a long time … that’s not the game that’s being played today.

Recently, we finalized a project with a new client; the final contract required no fewer than thirteen signatures from the buying side. Meaning; Thirteen human beings had to sign off on the idea that we’d be working together. That’s not something we can make happen under the one-on-one or one-on-two paradigm.

With that fact in mind, consider these three non-negotiable realities of business-to-business selling in the current environment, and the three adjustments we can make to thrive in that environment.

• Cross-functional teams are bringing deep levels of expertise to every major purchase decision. Experts on the buying team know a lot about a narrow topic; they’re specialists. The typical salesperson, a generalist, knows a little bit about a whole bunch of stuff. It’s unrealistic to expect that salesperson to hold their own in that conversation. Our job: break down our silos and get our own content experts involved in the discussion, whether or not they’re salespeople.
• Buying teams comprise buyers and influencers with widely varying levels of stature and authority. Meaning: we should probably expect their senior executives to weigh in. We should expect them to be hard to reach, too. One salesperson with limited tenure and organizational authority isn’t going to be part of the conversation. In some situations, our own senior people can help us to move an opportunity forward.
• Each individual on the buying team presents both a distinct behavioral footprint and a predictable personal take on what does and doesn’t matter about a given purchase. Understanding the DISC style of every influencer on the purchase decision, and aligning our communication accordingly, was once a pipe dream. Today’s AI technology makes it a practical, achievable deliverable – but only if we use the tools and deploy our selling team based on the data that the best technology puts in front of us.

We may give ourselves plausible-sounding reasons for ignoring these realities, or pretend that the adjustments outlined above are not relevant to our world. We may think involving others in our sales process could give them the opportunity to blow up a deal, and we may have some cherished anecdote that supports this (self-fulfilling) narrative. We may think we can handle any and every aspect of the buyer journey better than someone on our team could. We may simply feel more comfortable doing what is already familiar to us.

That’s all head trash. The reality is that it is only teams that adapt to the current realities of selling in the B-to-B space will survive. Our first and most important adaptation is: Recognize this is no longer a job interview. It’s us making our case to a jury. The way a jury works in the real world – our world — is pretty simple:  one juror with a reasonable doubt can determine the verdict.

We tell our clients: Know your jury. Do everything you can to make sure each member of your jury has every reason to lean into your case … and no reason to lean away from it.

David Mattson is Executive Chairman of Sandler. For more on deploying team selling effectively in your market, connect with Sandler.

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Alana Nicol

Daniel Negreanu does nothing by accident.

Negreanu is, arguably, the greatest poker player of all time. He’s won seven World Series of Poker bracelets and two World Poker Tour (WPT) championship titles. His total winnings, at last count, added up to roughly six million dollars. Maybe we should call him the Six Million Dollar Man. Whatever we call him, though, what we want to be sure we bear in mind is that he didn’t win all that money because he was lucky.

Like every other elite professional gambler, Negreanu has a process. He teaches an online MasterClass course that details that process; I am here to tell you that I got a lot out of that course. Not because I’m a gambler – I have zero poker face – but because I’m a sales professional, and because his course is a powerful reminder of a fundamental selling rule that’s more important today, in the age of AI, than it ever was: Don’t do anything that isn’t backed up by the data. Because if the data doesn’t back up your game, your game doesn’t work.

What’s Your Game Plan?

Another name for “doesn’t work” is “dysfunctional.” Unfortunately, a lot of sales teams are still playing a game plan that they think is a “sales process,” but is actually something very different: sales team dysfunction.

Hear me out. Negreanu uses statistics and data analysis to create a system that helps him understand and respond to every possible combination he could come up against during a poker game. He also has a system for reading his opponent on an emotional level – but that system itself is not emotional. It’s based in results and outcomes he can count and verify over time.  Those systems complement and reinforce each other, and combine to form a repeatable process that works. How does he know it works? He wins. He secures revenue.

Every single decision that Negreanu makes at the poker table is based on data, on a well-defined, constantly re-evaluated, data-driven process. That makes sense, right? So let me invite you to and your team to consider the possibility that there may be an important lesson here for sales professionals. Let me challenge you, for just a moment, to think critically for a minute about your data. What, exactly, is the data that your team uses when it’s working deals through your process? Is there data? And if your answer is “Yes”—how do you know?

Whether you track your deals using something low-tech like Excel, or with a tool that’s more cutting-edge – a CRM like HubSpot, or SalesForce say – I want to suggest that you’ve got a professional responsibility to answer questions like this objectively. Not with emotion. With verifiable data.

With that responsibility in mind, I’d like you to consider taking on the following thought exercise: rate the quality of the data that your team is using to make decisions on a scale of one to ten.

One means this: “We use the 1-800-WING-IT method,”

Ten means this: “Listen — because we’re talking about very, very good, verifiable data that we put in consistently, with zero resistance from the team, data we constantly update, data that delivers outcomes we regularly check against reality – because of all that, our sales process can forecast results so accurately that I personally feel comfortable betting my paycheck on it. I would do that right now.”

That’s the scale. So: Where does your sales process fall? Take a moment right now to think about that. Come up with a number.

The Reality Check

Most people we talk to use this challenge as an opportunity be honest with themselves and their team – as a reality check. Usually, after a long and thoughtful silence, the numbers they share with us come in at six or lower. Sometimes way lower.

I am here to tell you that six on a scale of ten would not work for Daniel Negreanu. And it won’t work for you or your team.

Six or lower on this scale is dysfunction. And again, all I mean by that is: The game plan doesn’t work. It doesn’t perform optimally. It doesn’t deliver the results it should. It doesn’t do the job.

Our sales process must help us make good decisions, and we can’t possibly make good decisions without good data. That’s reality. So right now, I’m going to share with you three questions you can use to improve your sales process. Getting to the point where you can answer YES to each of these questions will get you closer to what I call the Professional Poker Champion level – which comes in at nine or higher on the scale I just shared with you.

Question One: Is Your Process Staged to Match What Really Happens When Someone Buys from You?

A functional sales process is realistically staged. That means it identifies all the major real-world steps that an opportunity must go through to close.

In its very simplest form, meaning a transactional sales process without a whole lot of moving parts, the staging might look like this:

• Prospect
• Qualified Prospect
• Verbal Commitment to Buy

That’s the bare-bones version, and it’s only likely to be useful to someone who is selling to a single decision maker with no one else influencing the purchase decision. That’s an increasingly rare scenario. Most of the people we work with have more stages to work through and more people influencing those stages.

The point is, each organization with a sales team needs a process that fits that team like a glove. For that to happen, the stages in that process need to reflect, for each member of the team, what happens in an actual buyer journey that results in a decision to buy. By the way, the more complex the sales process is, the more essential it is to align the process closely with that buyer journey. We always want to meet buyers where they are.

Some teams have three or four steps; some have six;  some have more. Typically, the longer the sales cycle is, the more steps there are.

Question Two: How Are the Steps Weighted and Validated?

After we know what the steps are, we want to weight each of them based on the level of confidence we have that an opportunity at a given stage will close.

Let’s use as an example the extremely simple, transactional sales process I shared with you a moment ago. An opportunity that’s in the first step, Prospect, might desrve 10% or less confidence that we’re going to win, because we don’t even know what we don’t know at that point.

By contrast, what’s the likelihood that we’re going to receive the revenue from someone who gives us a Verbal Commitment to Buy? For a lot of teams we work with, that number comes in at about ninety percent.

If you’re using a CRM like HubSpot, you’ve probably noticed that it comes with percentages built into the system. The percentages show up automatically as you build out the stages. That’s fine – as long as the data gets validated.

The fact that we put the label of “10%” or “90%” on the stage does not mean we can assume that that’s what’s happening. It’s our job to compare the estimate with what’s taking place out in the real world, and then adjust accordingly. This is an ongoing process, and it’s something a lot of teams skip. Daniel Negreanu wouldn’t skip this step!

If we go back and look what really is true and see how our deals are closing, the stages and the weights we assign to them will all have verifiable, statistical reality.  And since that’s what we want, we make a point of aligning our stages with reality. How often? That depends on the team, but it’s likely, in my experience, to happen somewhere between monthly and quarterly.

Question Three: What Are the Exit Criteria?

The third question is all about the conditions that enable an opportunity to move from one stage to the next.

We’ve got a responsibility to define, in an absolutely crystal-clear, documented way, the precise criteria for exit from each and every stage in our sales process. What’s the information that we need to have before something moves out of Prospect and into Qualified Prospect? What do we need to have done before that can happen? What does the prospect need to have done? We need to get all of that down in black and white for each stage. If the criteria aren’t met, the opportunity does not move forward. Period.

We need to ask ourselves: How well defined are those criteria? And how standardized are they for everyone on our team? How well are all the members of the team observing and using the criteria? And here’s the thing. If people don’t know what the criteria are, if we don’t talk about them on a regular basis, it’s a pretty good bet people won’t be thinking about them and won’t be using them.

In large measure, this third question is the one that most depends on the quality of the leadership. If we’ve identified the stages, and we’ve weighted and validated them properly, but our team has no consistency in terms of what people know about the exit criteria, or how they can go about fulfilling those criteria, that’s a problem for us, as leaders, to solve.  And by the way, this is a big part of the value we at Sandler add to sales teams: helping teams and their leaders get on the same page in terms of what the exit criteria are and how to make sure they’re fulfilled before an opportunity moves forward in the process.

The Takeaway

Once you can answer all three of these questions … once you have a viable, data-driven process, and you implement it at the team and the individual level … good things will start to happen. They won’t happen by accident. They won’t happen because people got lucky. They’ll happen because you followed Daniel Negreanu’s lead by working the numbers, creating systems that work in a statistically verifiable way, and incorporating those systems within a sales process that gets deployed consistently.

For help in turning a dysfunctional game plan into one that works, meaning a sales process that’s tailored to your world to consistently deliver the financial results you and your team deserve, why not contact us? We may not be great poker players. But we do know how to help teams set up and execute a sales process that works.

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What’s the biggest stereotype people who don’t sell for a living have about the “typical salesperson”?

Remarkably, it’s still the one-dimensional shmoozer that movies, television, and other storytelling outlets latched on to sixty years ago. Pushy. Fast-talking. Fixated on closing the deal. Not always completely honest. Big on connections and contacts and the so-called “old boy network.” Heavily reliant on social bonding – by taking the client out to dinner, to a ballgame, or to the golf course.  Less reliant on things like being vulnerable, asking questions, making clear future commitments, and keeping those commitments.

Think about it. Even today, whenever you see someone “being a salesperson” on a TV show, in a movie, or in fiction, that’s still what you’re likely to encounter. Someone who lies, shades the truth, and salivates for the deal. Someone who fires off memorized, manipulative “closing techniques.” When was the last time you saw, in popular entertainment, any salesperson taking the time to pose a question to a buyer they don’t already think they knew the answer to? Telling a buyer the truth when doing so meant they lost the deal? Expressing genuine human interest in a prospective buyer without any ulterior motive?

I can’t think of one example.

What Can We Learn from the Stereotype?

So: Why did that stereotype take root in the first place? Why does it still have such a powerful hold on the popular imagination?

I think it’s because that stereotype was based in reality. A lot of people who sold for a living were (and, let’s be honest, still are) pushy, fast-talking, fixated on closing the deal, focused only on the contract, etcetera. That’s why this negative image of what we do for a living caught on in the popular imagination. Many, many, many people tried to sell for a living in this “old school” way, and they kept it up for a long time. Scriptwriters, among others, noticed.

I raise all this because I think it’s important to look closely at whether there’s anything we can actually learn as sales professionals from the “old school” model, any relevant reality at all behind the iconic “pushy-salesperson” stereotype.

And when we take the time to examine that stereotype, what we discover is that there is quite a lot of useful stuff to be found lurking behind it. Relationship-building does matter. A lot. Real-time social bonding matters, too. A lot. Introductions from people the buyer or influencer knows and trusts matter. Networking matters. Connection about non-work-related stuff matters. All of those things matter.  There’s nothing wrong with taking a client out to a ballgame or going golfing. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on the relationship and deepening it over time with cool activities and interactions that are designed to allow us to connect, purely as human beings, with the buyer. Those activities and connections really are incredibly important. They’re just not the entire job description.

The ”Data-Driven” Salesperson

Here’s another big question for you: What are the most successful salespeople doing today that they weren’t doing, say, three years ago?

In other words, what are the best-performing salespeople doing in the era of AI, in the era of data-analytics, the era of remote selling, the era of the buyer-empowered customer journey? What best practices are making a difference now that might not even have been on our radar screen before the pandemic hit?

Here’s what we’re seeing: The most effective sellers never imagine they’ve learned it all. They’re open to, and curious about, new platforms and new tactics. These elite sellers operate in a digital-first landscape, a working world where enabling technologies, relentless upskilling, and customer-centricity reign supreme. They leverage advanced CRM systems, massive, constantly updated databases, artificial intelligence, and data analytics expertly – all so they can personalize their approach. They don’t recite generic scripts or send out blind email blasts to thousands, or tens of thousands, of people. They use advanced information tools to sculpt outreach messaging and follow-up messaging that is authentic to them — and deeply, deeply customized to the individual recipient.

These salespeople understand that today’s buyers are barraged by spam, and that they have massive amounts of information at their disposal. These salespeople anticipate customer questions and needs, and they deliver tailored responses. And yes, these salespeople build relationships over time. Just not always in the way people used to think of salespeople building relationships. They create, and sustain, contact and engagement via a vast array of digital tools and resources that enable them to engage with prospects across various channels and touchpoints  –consistently and seamlessly.

There is then, an “old school” approach to selling. And a newer, “data-driven” approach. And my point is: in order to succeed as a sales professional, we need to be sure we are both willing and able to use what works from both outlooks.

The “old school” mentality may have over-relied now and then on the ability of rapport, connections, influence, and relationships to solve all the problems salespeople might encounter. And the “data-first” mentality, taken to its extreme, runs the risk of turning salespeople into marketers — by minimizing or overlooking entirely the non-negotiable importance of the human-to-human (meaning face-to-face or voice-to-voice) connections that launch and sustain all our important relationships. Maybe a golf game is in order! Or, who knows, a shared (appropriate!) Spotify playlist. It’s up to you.

Here’s the takeaway. When it comes to interacting effectively with the large (and growing) cast of characters who influence buying decisions within a buying organization, today’s most productive sales performers harness both the power of data and the power of personal connections.  They connect the dots, using cutting-edge tools to invest both time and effort in building rapport, nurture relationships over time, and earn the trust, good will, and loyalty of their clients. They use the best of the “old school” and the best of the “data-driven” school.

If you’d like to talk about how your team could do a better job of connecting those dots, let’s connect.

• Someone who fires offmemorized, manipulative “closing techniques.”
• And my point is: in order to succeed as a sales professional,

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