Sandler Brief

Sam was surprised when his boss, Juanita, called him into her office, closed the door, sat him down, and asked him:

“So what is it you guys do?”

This was not the question Sam expected to hear from his sales manager that morning. He was expecting Juanita to start grilling him about his quarterly numbers, which were not anywhere near where he wanted them to be. But when Juanita repeated her question –
“I’m serious, what do you guys do?” – He knew he had to take the request seriously. But he still wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

Ken’s closing ratio had been the lowest on the team for four months running. Juanita, his manager, asked him to meet with her privately so they could figure out, together, what the possible obstacles to better performance might be.

Betty’s quarterly numbers were low. Her manager, Milt, asked her to do some role-plays so they could identify potential areas for improvement. They spent about 20 minutes role-playing through various scenarios – at which point Milt called a time-out and asked, “Betty, do you realize you’re positioning us in exactly the same way with every person to whom you speak?”
Betty looked at her boss quizzically and asked: “Is that a bad thing?”
Milt gave a little smile and said, “It could be.”

Melody was feeling unmotivated.
Carlos, her sales manager, was pressuring her once again to improve her closing ratio … but as usual, he wasn’t giving her much guidance on how she should go about accomplishing this goal. Yes–her numbers were bad. Melody knew that. But after three months on the job, she was tired of being lectured about the numbers and didn’t feel supported in her efforts to turn things around. In fact, she wasn’t even sure she wanted to continue in sales.

Jane was struggling. Most of her deals weren’t moving forward, and her quarterly income target seemed well out of reach.

After months of trying, Milt had finally obtained an appointment with Walt, the CEO of BigCorp. Milt was looking forward to meeting with Walt and asking all the questions he had carefully prepared in order to qualify this opportunity. He arrived at the appointment in time … but before he could even ask his first question, Walt barked: “OK, it’s a busy morning, and we’ve only got ten minutes. Show me whatcha got.”

The meeting went downhill from there.

Juan’s sales numbers for the quarter were sharply down; lately, he felt he was struggling with his prospecting. He asked his manager Anita for help.

Juanita, three months into her first sales job, was having problems with her closing numbers. Her ratio was the lowest on the team, and she was far behind her quota for
the month. She asked her boss Cliff for help.