I have been in sales 30+ years now, and never considered myself as a “natural”. Had to work for it. Facing cold calling tasks, I remember vividly how a simple telephone can weigh as much as a 1000 kg and how one can move a Kompass database from the left side of a desk to the right for hours –in these days there was no email to find the perfect excuse neither. But I had to do it. There were days that I was flying, and others when I fell in a black hole, and I praise myself lucky to be surrounded by excellent managers – who became friends.
Through the years, I struggled with friendly prospects who never bought, and I did not understand. I spent hours trying to convince them that my features and benefits were the best. I gave dazzling presentations and demo’s, they told me they never heard something like this before – and they bought from somebody else. Or they had no money, and required me to lower my prices so that I hardly made a profit. They kindly asked me to call them back after the summer holidays, and seemed vanished in smoke when I did. I had millions of sales – in my funnel. I was a prisoner of hope, and I believed it was normal in my business.
Through the years I developed an intuition, and I started to tell upfront after I introduced myself that I was the most expensive kid on the block, and advised them to consider buying from my competitor perhaps – at which point they told me they rather do business with me and never asked for a discount neither. Or told me that is was over, and that was fine also. I painfully discovered ways to deal with large key accounts, buying committees and tenders. And how to behave properly in meeting a prospect in the lobby. But I was never able to reconstruct this successful behaviors properly . I found out that I needed a system. And I found Sandler Training.
I know now that the most important thing is to develop trust with your prospects. And sales just start to happen.
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The first ½ of my career I worked in International Purchasing and the last ½ in Sales and in Business Development Management functions.
As a buyer I went to a lot of negotiating trainings where I learned how to get leverage over the salesperson, so that I could get enormous price discounts while at the same time I got tons of free consultancy.
In the beginning of my sales career I had to find my way again because I am not a born salesperson.
I took several sales trainings but after 10 years I developed a kind of dislike against sales trainings in general because they were all alike and offered techniques I couldn’t live with – pushy, sleazy etc.
Finally I took almost by accident a Sandler sales training which learned me that you cannot sell anybody anything. Prospects have to convince themselves. Bingo, that was the missing link, and it certainly changed my life as a salesperson.
Some of the multinational companies I have worked for on behalf of Quasar or as an employee: Tenneco in Brussels, Fratelli D'Amato (ship brokers) in Naples, De Ster (injection moulding for aviation) www.dester.com in Hoogstraten.
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Het Sandler Verkoop Systeem is beter. Het is gemakkelijker. Het vereist minder papierwerk. Minder tijd. De meeste salesmensen haten detail werk, dus dat trok me aan. Als er iets is dat verkopen gemakkelijker kan maken, sneller, zodat ik meer geld kan verdienen, zodat ik meer tijd kan doorbrengen met mijn familie - Dan ben ik er voor te vinden.
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Bob Gregoire, MA Sandler Franchisee