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A huge part of every sales interaction is having good bonding and rapport with your prospect. Most people do that accidentally and inconsistently, but we help clients learn how to do it intentionally and consistently.

I've met with hundreds of salespeople and business owners over the years. I have yet to meet one that wouldn't like more and better referrals.

Referrals shorten the sales cycle and your chances of success are greater. But most people have no system for building their business through referrals! And no, putting "The best compliment you can give me is a referral," on your business card and in your email signature does not qualify as a system.

So how can you build a referral system?

When my team and I meet with our clients, we're often advising them on their business model as a whole. Sales is the engine that drives a business, but the rest of the business has to be operating correctly as well.

My team and I often share with people how good sales is a result of good communication. In fact, in several workshops we put on, we explain within the first few minutes that we'll use the terms interchangeably during the workshop.

If you're in sales, chances are pretty good you want to sell more. But selling more means better prospecting, which is often a salesperson's least favorite activity. In fact, we've done our best to boil it down to an equation: X hours spent prospecting = Y number of conversations = Z dollars in sales

Time is arguably the most precious commodity we have. You can always make more money, but I haven't found any way to actually create more time. If you find a way, let me know.

As it turns out, others will only respect your time if you respect it as well. And people who don't respect their own time are much less likely to respect yours.

A while back, a client of mine ran into an awkward situation with a referral partner who didn't respect her time. Let's take a look at what my client did in that situation, then I'll share some additional resources.

Prospecting is a challenge for many salespeople, and it can be really uncomfortable! And if you're not careful, uncomfortable situations can lead to something we at Sandler like to call verbal vomiting. In other words, you stop asking all the right questions and start talking too much instead. You end up sharing features and benefits instead of really uncovering if you're a good fit or not.

If you're in any customer service oriented role in your organization, chances are pretty good you hear complaints from time to time. If you handle those the right way, there may be a huge opportunity for growth.

If you're like many owners, CEOs, VPs of sales, and salespeople, you'd love to land more large accounts. However, large accounts typically have multiple decision makers involved in the process, and that can be a challenge.