A couple years back, I had an interesting experience. I was at one of our regional Sandler meetings in a room with about 15 other Sandler trainers and coaches. We get together and talk about a number of different things. Often, the Sandler office that's hosting us will have local experts come in to share something with us.
That particular day, we were on a lunch break, and two people walked in. Initially, I assumed the local Sandler sales coach had invited them to come in to talk to us about something.
Turns out they were there on a cold sales call!
Picture a room full of 15 Sandler sales trainers and coaches interacting with these two people on a cold sales call.
As you might guess, some of the mistakes they made were interesting to us as sales coaches. In fact, by the end, I actually felt bad for them. But there are a few lessons to be learned from the experience.
First, they never bothered asking what it was we did for a living. They didn't ask the guy who owned the office, and they didn't ask any of the rest of us. Can you imagine it might have been a different conversation if they had?
Second, they were dressed far too casually. One of them even had a sports jersey on! You should dress like the people you're going to sell to, and the rest of us were definitely not dressed like that.
Third, they went into full-blown presentation mode in less than four minutes. How much do you think they really knew about that local Sandler sales coach and his needs? Not a lot in four minutes, that's for sure!
Finally, they tried to squash objections. When my counterpart shared he already had a vendor for what they were selling, you could almost see them reading from a script they'd memorized. Of course, as we know in Sandler, the only person who can overcome an objection is the person who raised it. A professional salesperson prevents them from happening in the first place.
So if you ever go on cold calls, learn from their mistakes. Spend some time in bonding and rapport, dress appropriately, learn about your prospect's needs before presenting, and prevent objections rather than trying to overcome them.
