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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.

From time to time, our team will be talking with someone in leadership at another organization about working with us, and the conversation gets to the investment.

"So what kind of investment are we talking about?" the other person might ask.

If we're not careful, we can get in our own way. We make assumptions about how our prospects will react to something and can really foul things up. It happens all the time! You have to take care of those things early on in the process.

Your sales team is important. If you run a business or sales team, you likely know what they do is the engine that drives your business. So hopefully you're investing time and resources in making sure they're well equipped to make sales.

But others in your organization have to be well equipped also. Your entire team is a potential sales force for you, if you've done a good job of preparing them.

It's amazing how often prospects talk about price being the issue. But when you dig a little deeper, it's almost never the real issue.

One of our clients was talking with a prospect that was referred to him and lived out of town. The client was going to do some work as a result of an insurance claim, and the prospect wanted to get a bid from him before she gave him the insurance paperwork. When he asked why, she said, "I want to see what you're going to give me first."

Just because a prospect has a problem that we can fix doesn't mean it matters to them. One of our Sandler Rules is No Pain = No Sale. And while you can't take that too literally, a lack of personal impact definitely makes a sale much harder to make.