Your team has plenty of leads coming in. They work every one of them the same way, and most of them never close. That reads as a lead volume problem, so the fix becomes more leads.

In this episode we make the case that low conversion on the leads you already have is a qualifying problem. More leads at the same level of qualification only give your salespeople more people to sort through.

Why more leads will not fix your close rate

A lead can be qualified for marketing and still not be qualified for a sale. When sellers chase everyone equally, the people they close are the ones who would have bought anyway. A pipeline full of people is not the same as a pipeline full of qualified buyers.

What Sandler means by making no easy to say

Most people hear Sandler and think it means get to no faster. Most sellers make no hard to say and yes easy to say. We flip that by making no easy to say and yes hard to say, starting with the up-front contract. If a prospect never has to qualify to work with you, your process ends with you chasing the lowest bidder. Jim shares why he could not get an up-front contract out of his mouth for his first two or three years in Sandler, and the line from a peer that changed it.

What qualifying questions sound like on a real call

We walk through the questions that sort a lead: what has the buyer already tried to fix, do they have the support of their organization, what can they actually change, and what did they think when they saw what a fix might cost.

The billboard that doubled the leads

Jim tells the year a billboard doubled his firm's lead count. Volume and profitability both dropped by just under 10%, because the team spent the year chasing leads that were qualified for marketing and not for a sale.

Where to start

If you do not believe your own pipeline, you have both a sales problem and a lead problem. Start with the diagnostic: what does good look like, and are you using the data you already have?

If this resonated, check out Make It Easy for Your Prospects to Tell You No, where we cover asking for the no in the up-front contract.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development

Your buyer says your bid came in high and asks you to sharpen your pencil. Before you answer, you have already started discounting in your head.

This week we continue our conversation on transactional analysis and turn to the games buyers play. A game is a pattern of behavior with a predictable outcome, and nobody has to explain the rules. The most common games in sales are built to get you to lower your price, and they work by hooking your guilt and your need for the buyer's approval. We walk through how to recognize them when a customer asks for a discount and what to do instead.

The kick me game

A buyer tells you your bid came in higher than another one and asks what you think about that. It is not a question. It is a suggestion that you lower your price, and most sellers take the kick.

Why the first discount happens in your head

Most salespeople walk into a call already believing they are too expensive, so "sharpen your pencil" only confirms the bias. Jim is a firm believer that the first discount is always in the salesperson's head before he ever talks to the buyer. That is why we say do not look in your prospect's wallet.

Should you discount in exchange for referrals?

"Do a great job on this and I have four or five people I can send you." Referrals come from good work whether or not anyone promised them. A buyer who trades a referral for a discount is telling you he will introduce you to people who can push you around, and those people will ask for the same deal. Do that often enough and your client base becomes a buying group.

How to hold the line on a price objection

Once you believe in your product or service enough to hold the line, you stop chasing every opportunity that comes in. You tell the buyer what working with you looks like and leave the decision in his court. When a buyer will not stop playing games, thank him, tell him you are not a good fit, and go find an adult-to-adult relationship.

The games inside your own company

The same games run between sales, marketing, and production. When sales uses the prospect as a weapon against production's pricing, the discount is decided before the buyer says a word. Get the departments in one room and name where the games show up.

If this resonated, check out The Childhood Script Still Running Your Sales Calls, where we cover the parent, adult, and child ego states behind these games.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development

You walk out of a sales call and replay it. You lectured the buyer, or you nodded along and agreed to send a proposal you never wanted to send. The pattern is older than your career.

This week we work through transactional analysis, the concept underneath most Sandler techniques. Every conversation runs between three ego states: parent, adult, and child. Selling gets done adult to adult, and most salespeople default to one of the other two without noticing.

What the three ego states sound like on a sales call

The parent comes in two versions. The critical parent wags a finger ("that is not what you should have done"), and the nurturing parent soothes. The adult is calm, fact based, and curious, and asks questions like "what would have to happen for this to make sense?" The child shows up as the free child with giddy excitement, the adapted child full of mother-may-I filler phrases, and the little professor, the clever, sarcastic one who reads the room and sometimes attacks whatever someone is self-conscious about.

Why presentation mode backfires

Jim calls himself eminently qualified to talk about the critical parent: both of his parents were critical, and he got a double dose. Presenting puts the seller at the front of the room like a school teacher, telling the buyer what to do. Nobody wants to be sold, but most people need help buying. Underneath the presentation, the seller sits in the child, saying look at me, look what I can do for you.

Why your siblings would recognize you on a sales call

The ego states you lived in growing up become the scripts that run your calls today. People with siblings learned how these dynamics play out between peers, not only with parents and bosses. Play a recording of your last sales conversation for a brother or sister, and they would say, "yeah, that is you."

What a crossed transaction is

Every exchange is a transaction. A parent asks, a compliant child agrees, and nothing breaks. When the child starts negotiating instead, the transaction crosses, and the parent ends up throwing the fit. Drama lives in crossed transactions, and drama exists to avoid responsibility.

Where to start

Look up transactional analysis, then watch how you show up at your next networking meeting. Jim walks through his own networking default and why a clique of familiar faces is the child seeking safety. You own 100 percent of you. Once you know your default ego state, you can adjust it, and you stop trying to fix the buyer.

If this resonated, check out The Show-and-Tell Habit That Ends in "Send Me a Proposal," where we cover what happens when a seller goes into presentation mode on autopilot.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development