How to Improve your Sales Process – Interview with Jim Mattei at Sandler Sales Institute in Chicago

How to Improve Your Sales Process – Interview with
Jim Mattei at Sandler Sales Institute in Chicago
Ron: Good morning! It’s Ron Rodi, Jr. Welcome to our weekly business growth
podcast with PME360. with me this morning as always is our CEO. Ryan Paul Adams.
Good morning!

Ryan: Good morning Ron!

Ron: How are you?

Ryan: Doing great! Jim, good morning!

Jim: Hey guys!

Ron: with us today. I’m very excited to have Sandler Sales Force Development
Specialist Jim Mattei.

Jim brings more than 16 years of extensive sales experience that he brings to his
clients. As an associate at Sandler Training, he uses his passion in helping individuals
and companies develop and grow professionally using the proven Sandler
methodology on sales and sales management.

I’m very excited to have him on today. My mentor and excellent sales trainer, Jim
Mattei. Good morning! How are you?

Jim: Hey guys! Thanks for having me.

Ryan: Absolutely.

Ron: Thanks for joining Jim. I’m going to call you the original sales scientist. We
appreciate you being on board. We really do. We thank you for your time and we’re
excited to have you on today.

Jim: I’m looking forward to it.

Ryan: From just a little bit that I had the chance to talk to you Jim, I’ve learned a ton.
So I’m excited to have you on today.

Jim: So I might be able to impart a few things that I’ve learned over the years.

Powering Growth Online for Local Businesses
http://www.PME360.com

Ron: So Jim, as a sort of starting off point, could you give us a little bit more about
you and what you do. What your role is. And can you tell us about Sandler? And the
Sandler philosophy?

Jim: Sure. I work with companies with sales forces anywhere from 3 to 4 people all
the way up to 40 to 50.

I have a client who has 80 sales people. Basically, what we can do is we look at four
different areas. We look at skills. We teach skills.

Obviously Sandler has been around for 40 years. A lot of people come to use us for
the training. It’s good stuff. We have like 90 hours of content.

And then we talk about people. Getting the right people on the bus. Because if you
don’t have the right people, certainly teaching skills that people aren’t able to grow
is kind of a waste of money.

We provide structure, process around hiring, process around management, holding
people accountable, process around planning and debriefing calls, so on.

And then we also talk about at a high level. And that is strategy. Strategy is where
you’re going. And strategy is 80% new business and 20% existing, so we work in all of
those four areas with companies to develop and grow their sales organization.

Ron: it sounds like you have a pretty complete system. The management process
from that standpoint, it sounds like you have systems that help businesses.

Let’s focus Jim a little bit on the sales side and winning more deals as a small
business. If that’s okay with you, could you structure that a little bit?

Let’s talk a little bit about the process. And one of the things in my experience with
Sandler that’s really helped me as a sales person is really having that process down.

And it’s very important to stick to that process just like anything in life. Sticking to a
plan and to an agenda. Could you touch briefly Jim on – do you feel that it’s
something that Sandler does better than anyone else?

Tell us a little bit more on what sets you apart from the competition? And maybe
work that sales process a little bit in there.

Jim: Couple of things. First off, as far as process. We have a proven process for
selling.

The key in understanding. If you don’t have the process for selling, you’re going to
default to the prospect’s process.


And what happens is, traditional sales, it’s you show up. You do a little bonding
rapport, then you may do a needs analysis. And then you go present. You go close.
And you end up chasing people.

I mean that’s traditional sales process and prospects understand that process
because they take your information. Then they tell you they’re interested, “call me
back.” And then, they go into hide mode.

The key is to have a process that disrupts the prospect’s process. You need to be in
control as the sales person.

I think, you know, I’m biased to our process. But there are processes out there and
there are some good ones. But I think what sets us apart is really not necessarily the
process as much as the way we deliver our product.

And so my philosophy and our company’s philosophy is powering reinforcement. So
whatever process you use, the key is to have constant reinforcement to it.

Think about going to the gym. When I say I’d go to the gym this weekend. After three
days, I’m going to be in great shape. You would laugh at me.

Training is not an event. It is a habit. And I think, learning a process takes time. You
can’t change all these things over night - as you know because you are a Sandler
client. It doesn’t happen overnight.

So what differentiates ourselves I think is the way we deliver it more so than the
actual process. Although, I love our process.

Ron: So is it fair to say then that sales is a lifetime skill development or lifetime
mastery, if you will.

Jim: I do. If you think about it, it’s the highest paying profession in the world. Yet we
give a little amount of time to ongoing training,

Let’s take for example doctors. Doctors have constantly, constantly gotten training.
They have to go certain amount of credit hours a year. They have to go and reinforce
what they’ve learned. After they went through what? 10 years of school and
residency – hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I mean, it’s ridiculous. And with sales people, you just stick them out to the field and
expect them to bring in the business.

Ron: Right. To rely on the skill set that they’re born with. But sometimes if you don’t
have the proper training then you’re incomplete.


So a lot of people that we see, salespeople – they’re very good. They have the raw
skills. They have the raw talent. But they don’t have the complete capsule if you will.
That really gets them over the top.

So you bring up a good point. I mean if you take a look at attorneys, doctors – how
many years of school have they gone through. That’s an excellent point. So let’s go
ahead with that Jim.

Can you talk a little bit about the Sandler process – the Sandler submarines? You
want to go down in that rabbit hole with us?

Jim: Sure. And I think, for the listeners, I’ll give a big picture overview and I’m going
to break it down in segments. I mean, you know Ron, we can spend 8 weeks to go
through that process.

Ron: And it’s not fair, you’re right. It’s only a 25-minute conversation.

Jim: But I can chunk it down for you. Really, there are 3 key things - bonding rapport,
then you have qualifying and closing.

So think about sales this way. Think about it like a three-legged stool and you need
to have all three legs strong to sit in this stool or it’s going to collapse.

The first leg is bonding rapport or people have to trust you. They have to feel
comfortable with you. They have to feel that you’re going to bat for them.

You know how it is. They have to like you. But more than like you, I think, respect
you.

The second leg of the stool is people have to believe that you understand their
problem. Fundamentally understand and not just get a surface-level understanding.
But really understand the root causes of the problem.

And the third thing is they have to believe that you have the expertise to fix their
problem. So when you go back to talk about process it’s like trust.

You have to be trust worthy and credible. You do that by asking good questions that
get people to say, “I don’t know. I haven’t though of that that way.”

I mean think about when you go to the doctor. And this is the best analogy. And I use
it over and over again.

If sales people look at sales as if a doctor looks at his profession. You go into a
doctor’s office. And I said, “Hey Doctor, my arm hurts.”


He doesn’t go to a 30-page powerpoint on how great they are fixing arms. And
here’s who we’ve done. Here’s some references, you get up and do surgery now.

What they do is, they say, “Tell me about that. How long has it been a problem?
What happened? What occurred? When did you start noticing this?”

Ryan: Asking the right questions.

Jim: Yes. Look, it’s no more difficult that that. Yet, we the sales people get in our way
- our egos are getting in the way.

We show up and say, “Wow! If I tell people how much I know, they’ll go think I’m so
smart and they’re going to buy from me. The passion I have for my product.”

I am okay with having passion for a product but at the end of the day, it’s all about
the patient. It’s about the prospect. It’s not about us. If it does make sense.

Ron: It totally does. Let me ask you a question more from that.

So the three-legged stool concept, I totally get it. How challenging is it though? A lot
of times, sales people will only have an hour long meeting. And to get through those
three major anchors. Those are major milestones.

Tell me a little bit more about getting through that in a 45-minute conversation that
you may have with a prospect nowadays. Tell me a little bit about that.

Jim: Well, in to your point. Depending if somebody is listening here to this podcast.

You will either have a very transactional sale which is a one-call close or you can
have a 2-year sales cycle. It depends on the sales cycle. But I don’t think you have to
accomplish all in an hour or 45 minutes.

But if I have a 2-year sales cycle, I might spend the first 2 to 3 months establishing
trust and credibility. You really have to apply it to your world.

Ron: Really, it’s applied to each individual prospect – it depends on what their needs
are. What their pain is if it’s a transactional type of client if you will.

If the problem is obvious and the fix is let’s say easy or quick, then it might be the
time you go ahead and try to move forward.

But if it’s a little more structured, if you will then it will take more time to really dig
deep – to really find out why are you here, why did you come to the doctor. If it’s not


so obvious as a broken arm, maybe there’s something else going on. Try to get to the
root cause.

Jim: Yes.

And to add another variable in there besides whether somebody has pain. When
you have pain in the present and pain in the future.

Some people don’t have a pain now and they’ll have pain 6 months from now. Pain
referring to a problem that’s causing emotional stress in their life. But there’s
another variable too that you have to consider.

And as trainers we have to understand that behavioral styles of people. Some people
probably you can call on and they can make decisions rather quickly. Other people
don’t like to change so fast.

And so if I was with somebody that you know, the type of person that plods along,
they don’t want to make changes quickly. I might spend a lot of time building trust
and credibility knowing that if I gain this person’s trust, they usually become really
long term clients.

So you have to adapt to not only if they have issues or not, if this is the right time.
But what about the type of people. People just don’t move this fast as other people.

Ron: And it’s important as a sales professional to be able to identify the type of
person that you’re dealing with, right?

Jim: Yes, that’s right. That’s why big companies have commercials all the time. There
are certain group of people, because they see the name brand and they see that
they might have been around for a while. It gives them a level of comfort.

Certain people don’t like trying new stuff. They want time-tested, proven stuff. And
if you’ve just called on them one time, it’ll take a lot longer, a lot more calls to get
them to realize that you’re around – that you’ve been around.

Ron: That’s an excellent overview. I think Sandler, there’s so much more to
uncovering that process. We can dedicate hours and hours. As you said, it’s really a
lifelong skill.

Jim, let’s go back to for the purpose of the call today. Let’s talk a little bit more about
winning more deals as a small business – whether it’s an individual or a small
company. What is your insight on how people can be more successful today?


Jim: Insights on success. I think what you’re in today versus 5 to 6 years ago. I think
one of the things that I noticed today more that anything is the environment of sales
is so polarized.

You think about it, sales people have a lot of pressure to close and get deals because
quite frankly, companies are pressing. They need revenue.

On the other hand, the prospects are holding on to their money because this is a
very unique economic environment and they don’t know what’s going on.

There are a lot of variables that are unpredictable. It sets up this I need a sale and I
don’t want to spend money.
And prospects also are way more educated today because of the Internet than they
were 10 years ago. So you got people who know more about your competition than
some sales people I know. So it’s amazing. It’s a very interesting dynamics.

Ron: So what can be done? What’s one to do then when faced with that problem? I
know there are small businesses that struggle. Sales individuals who struggle with
exactly what you’ve described.

Jim: I think setting what we call upfront contract or an agreement on a first meeting.
I think the perception is on the prospect’s side is if you meet them, you’re going to
close them hard.

And I always coach people to say, look set up the meeting. Here is the way it’s going
to go. You have this issue. We’re going to talk about the issue. I’m going to share
with you about what we can do to help you with the issue.

You can certainly share. You can ask me any question. I can ask you any question. At
the end, if we’re not a fit, that’s okay. We may not be.

Or, if there is we’ll figure out the next step and put our heads together. But quite
frankly, you’re not going to be our next client on the next call.

If you set it up as if you are going to come in and have a ground breaking
conversation and that they are not going to get this hard pressure close and they
believe you. Then, they’re more likely to sit down with you.

Ryan: Takes the pressure off.

Jim: I think quite frankly, it’s just common sense. But the problem is if you think
about it. I was a little kid and I went to the dentist. I remember this vividly.


I was 7 years old. I had to get my tooth filled. I went to the dentist’s office. I sat down
and he pulled this huge needle. He said, “Open your mouth.” And he sticks a needle
in my mouth. It hurts like you know what.

And he starts drilling my teeth. And my dad was with me at that time since I was
young. And I literally ripped his sweater almost. I was scared to death.

So I looked at that compared to my last visit with the dentist which was, “Hey Mr.
Mattei! Come on in. Sit down. How you’ve been? Hey we have movies for you. You
can listen to whatever you want. Let me tell you what’s going to happen today. You
have got about an hour and a half here. We’ll make this as comfortable as possible.
Doctor’s going to come in and tell you. Then you’ll have the hygienist come in, it’ll
take about 45 minutes for teeth cleaning, we’ll take some x-rays. At the end, the
doctor’s going to sit down, look at your x-rays and tell you: here’s what we suggest
based on what we found. And then you’ll be out, easily an hour and a half – no
longer. Is that okay?”

So it’s a completely different experience.

Ron: So it’s fair to say then that you’re asking for permission and you’re explaining
exactly what the purpose of the meeting is or what the purpose of the appointment
is to set the prospect at ease, right?

And really get them to understand exactly, hey I’m not here necessarily to hard sell
you. I’m not necessarily here to talk about me. This meeting should be about you.
And let’s jump a little bit more into that.

I’m sure you have questions for me Mr. Prospect. I’m sure you want some examples
of what it is that we do, who it is that we work with, that’s great!

But let’s not spend an hour talking about Sandler or PME360. Let’s spend an hour
talking about the pain that you are having, why is it that we’re here.

How are we able to help you? And at the end of the meeting, if we can’t help you
let’s just agree to be friends and part ways. Or potentially, maybe we can get started
and talk about the next steps. Setting up the proper agenda – the proper mindset to
really set the meeting sounds like a key step. And I know that it is.

Jim: It is. And you said it early. It keeps people comfortable. And anytime you can
take away any mystery in sales meetings, the more likely they’re going to meet with
you. So that’s my experience.

Secondly, when you set an appointment, I think it’s really important that you get
them to share with you the issue or problem that your company may be able to fix.


I find that people buy emotionally. They make decisions intellectually. So if I’m
frustrated because my sales people are calling not enough new business or they are
not calling high enough in an organization or not growing the business because of it
or I’m not hiring the right sales people.

You know sales people sounds good, looks good on paper and when you interview
them. Then they don’t produce, you scratch your head and wonder what you’re
doing wrong on your hiring process.

If I have one of those issues, if I want to understand their issues, you know that’s a
good starting point for the meeting.

But if I’m just barging in, “Hey I’m in the area and can I just stop by?”

People look at the calendar that day and they’d say, “I don’t know why I’m meeting
with this person.”

That’s why it’s really important to have some topic or issue they’re dealing with as a
starting point for the meeting. It’s critical.

Especially, think about this using the dentist analogy again. How many people have
cancelled appointments? I get this a lot with my clients. They go, why are my
appointments cancelled? What was the example of the issue that got them to invite
you in?

A lot of times they don’t know. They’re like, he was just interested in what we did.
And he invited me in. Here’s a problem with that. If you have an emotional issue that
somebody wants to address. Like, I said the dentist analogy is a good one.

Let’s pretend that I woke up today and I had a sore tooth. You follow me?

Ron: Absolutely. You’re going to run to the dentist. You’re going to make sure you
don’t cancel that appointment.

Jim: I’ll call the dentist and say my tooth hurts. And he’d say, “Okay, get in next
week.”

Next week comes and I wake up that morning, my tooth doesn’t hurt and I have a lot
of stuff on my plate. You know what I mat cancel that dentist appointment. It’s the
same thing.

If you get somebody on the phone today and they have an issue and you’ve
uncovered it. And you can tell that they have that urgency to meet with you. You set
an appointment the next week. If you don’t follow up – a lot of sales people don’t
follow up and call back because they’re afraid they’ll cancel the appointment.


The key is just to say, “Hey Bob! Looking forward to talking tomorrow. You shared
with me frustrations about not hiring good sales people. And all these people you are
hire end up a big weight on the company. And so that’s the issue we’re going to talk
about starting tomorrow on our meeting. Looking forward to it!”

I need to bring up that issue or that pain prior to the meeting because people forget.

Ron: Absolutely. And they don’t necessarily wake up in the morning and say, “Hey
I’m waiting up on Jim Mattei to call me. And come in here.”

You have to make sure that you’re staying on top of the issue and you’re bringing up
that emotive response that got them to take that meeting in the first place.

Jim: Yes. By the way, think about this, guys. I’m sure you’ve done this before. Isn’t it
easy to commit to a meeting two to three weeks out? And all of a sudden you get to
that day and it’s a different thing.

Ryan: Oh sure.
Jim: It’s like, I’ll quit smoking about a month from now. And the day comes up. A
month goes by and you know what, maybe I won’t. It’s easy to commit to things in
the future.

But when it comes right down to the day before or the day of, then they start to
really reconsider. That’s a human dynamic.

Ryan: You’re level of pain and frustration as a business owner can change from day
to day. It happens fast. You know you’ll be where does the next deal come from
here?

You’re maybe about light on workload or the phone’s not ringing like it was a month
ago. And all of a sudden, you know, you set up a meeting to meet a marketing
person or whatever to come in and all of a sudden the phone starts ringing.

Now your pain is diminished, the problem you had yesterday is gone. But that
doesn’t mean that the sales person or the company that relationship should die
there.

Keep cultivating and nurturing that relationship because at some point that business
or that person or whoever you’re looking to do that business with is going to need
what you offer.

Be the person that stays in front of them and nurture that relationship versus just
the one time, ok we’ll set up this meeting and you disappear.


Jim: Agreed. A lot of sales people give up. You know the nature of sales people they
tend to be turn them and burn them.

I call this guy three times. He’s not interested. Well, that’s not enough. You might
have somebody to call over a period of time of a year. If you are working with bigger
clients, bigger accounts – we call them elephants. You got a Fortune 500 company,
it’d take you 2 years.

Ryan: Here’s a quick question for you. You’ve got a great meeting with somebody.
You’ve set expectations. You’ve done all the things you’re supposed to do. And
you’ve agreed to take that next step – whatever it is. Whether it’s signing up with
you to build a home or marketing contract or whatever it is. And then they
disappear.

What do you suggest in those situations? Like how much chasing should you do?
Should you continue to keep at it until you get an answer – either one way or the
other?

Ron: In this case Ryan, what you’re saying is, you have a verbal agreement and the
prospect disappears?

Ryan: Correct.

Jim: Couple of things. You have to understand when you leave, my verbal agreement
at the end of the meeting and yours even though you say we had one maybe
completely different.

I think, when we talk about this I just went to a Sandler conference and one of the
speaker talked about what is the next step and define it.

A lot of times it sounds like, let’s get going on this. Once you call me in a couple of
days and great! When you leave them, you think you have the next step.

But here’s the question, if you don’t define what get going means.

Get going to me versus get going to you. Maybe get going means I’m going to start
talking to some internal people and get them on board. You think get going means I
get an order tomorrow.

We’re caught in a mutual mystification. If I call your prospect and I ask him, “What
exactly is supposed to happen between you and Ryan? What did you agree on?”

If he doesn’t say the same thing that you said to me then we’ve got a problem. So I
think, right there, setting an agreement at the end of a meeting that’s very specific.


Define whatever the agreement is. Define it specifically.

Secondly, people back out. There’s a psychological component to why people back
out. Buyer’s remorse as we call it. As I mentioned to you, you buy emotionally.

There’s a psychological term for it but we have so little time.

There’s a little kid inside of you that wants everything. “This sounds great. I want
this. I want this. I want this.”

Have you ever walked out of wanting something and six hours later, you start
coming out with reasons why it doesn’t make sense right now? Have you had that
other voice going on?

Your parents’ voice going on your head. We can predict that. You could predict that.
We actually have a step in our process that specifically takes care of avoiding
cancellations, back outs and buyer’s remorse.

It’s called post sale step. It’s very powerful. If you understand human behavior,
human psychology, you know that if somebody says they’ll do it and then they walk
out and change their minds. We know how to fix that. We know how to deal with it
upfront because I don’t want to chase them for three weeks. It’s over.

Ron: And Jim, to that point, it’s important to remember also that you as a
salesperson, as an individual, you have rights, too.

There’s nothing wrong with “Hey Mr. Prospect can you tell me exactly what you
mean by get going. Because there’s nothing wrong with asking those questions.
Because you are thinking it.

I’m not trying to pressure you here. I just want to make sure I understand what you
mean by “let’s get going”. Sales people have rights. And that’s one of the things
that’s important in my book. That fits in to what we’re talking about.

Jim: You think of it in an adult mindset. This is peer to peer. I’m no better than my
prospect. But they’re no better than me. We’re just having a business conversation
and we’re talking about specifics.

It’s just a reasonable thing to bring up. It’s not as if you are getting confrontational.
You’re just saying, “Hey is it fair to say that you ask me let’s get going.”

I probably have a different definition than you. And they’d agree and I’d say, “What
would yours be?”

Ron: Very good.


Jim, let’s talk a little bit. I know we’re running short in time here. Really appreciate
this. We’d love to have you back again – to dive deeper a little bit more here.

Tell us a little bit about how you got started in Sandler. Do you have an Aha! moment
in your career that said I’m tired of doing the same old thing? I’m tired of showing up
to these meetings and not have an upfront contract. I’m tired of chasing these
prospects or doing unpaid consulting. I’m tired of not having an effective sales
funnel, of not knowing the pain.

Tell me of that moment that I know you’ve had. Obviously this is a leading question
but tell me more about that because I know it’s a great story.

Jim: I started out at Sandler as a client in 1996 in Tampa, Florida. You do a lot of
windshield time in sales and there was a radio station down there that played this
Sandler Sales Institute commercial over and over again. And I heard that thing fifty
times.

So I was in medical sales at that time. And I used to sell medical equipment to
doctor’s offices. They were chemistry and hematology analyzers.

Our company had a big promotion going on and I was out prospecting trying to set
up labs and offices and I dropped off some literature.

And one time, this lady said, “we’re interested.”
So I ended up getting a meeting. My boss was all excited because the revenue that
generated for the branch was excellent.

Plus there was such as focus on it from a corporate standpoint that I became this
hero boy. Because I would come up with these leads – specifically one of those leads.

So I got the manufacturer’s rep to come in, do a demo. I had to do an ROI, how much
blood work you’re sending out to the labs and if you bought it, how much money
your doctors would make.

We did all that. We presented. They said it looked great. Call us in a couple of weeks.
We were ready to go.

I called in a couple of weeks. And they said, “Jim there were a couple of things that
came up, we’re not going to do this until the next quarter but we’re definitely doing
it.”

So I called back next quarter. And they said, “Jim it doesn’t look like we’re doing it
this year. Look like, at the beginning of the year. Keep following up with me.”


So one day, I was out in that area and I just wanted to walk in the office to see and
say, “Hey! How’s it going?”

I walked in. The lady at the front says, “Go in the back.” Because she was on the
phone. She said, “Go ahead, go in the back.”

I walk through the back door and what do I see – full lab set up. The office manager
came out and sees me and she gabs, “Jim, I’m sorry. I can explain.”

I found out that my competitor who has been there for 10 years got wind of it. And
said, “We can sell you this.”

And the doctor said, “We’ll just go with you.” Ultimately, I was mad at them. But
really, that was my fault. I have taken accountability for that.

Ryan: That’s interesting.

Jim: It took that much literally and I got into the car and heard that Sandler Sales
Institute commercial.

And I literally called them right away. And I actually made my investment back within
6 months after training. Because this medical sales, if you sell enough equipment it
was decent money at that time. You can make the money back. That’s how really I
got started.

It was a painful lesson. I actually think it was the best lesson I ever had in my life.

Ron: What we’ve talked about before learning from those lessons, learning from the
mistakes. Because that’s the only way to learn.

Jim: I certainly took action. I didn’t want that to happen again. That was brutal.

Ryan: if you had closed that deal, what would you really have learned long term?
Like maybe it would have taken you a couple of years before you took the plunge to
learn and do the Sandler training?

Jim: I have no idea.

Ryan: Success sometimes, especially, if early delays your learning process. It sounds
weird but it actually does.

Jim: I completely agree with that. I think the key is my dad, he never lets us make
excuses and I could have said – I could have 50 excuses why I didn’t get that sale.


But at the end of the day, I said to myself, “what could I have done better to avoid
that?”

And I think, that’s when you start going. Obviously, I’m not where I want to be with
respect to professional selling. I need to get better because I can’t have that happen
again.

I think that’s key. A lot of sales people externalize things like you know what, the
economy is horrible or our marketing stinks or the leads weren’t good or we have
prices that aren’t good enough.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you. You’ve got to play with the tools that you have.

My experience is, it’s really the process that you bring and your credibility in front of
the prospect. You’ve got to work on yourself. That’s the way to get better with sales.

Ron: Great stuff, Jim. We could talk all day on this. Just to wrap things up, Jim, is
there any thing you want to touch on that we haven’t talked about today?

Jim: I think we pretty much covered it. I think it’s getting better today. But sales, the
career, it’s a profession yet people give lip service to the ongoing training and
reinforcement that you would think would be inherent in the highest paid profession
in the world.

It blows my mind quite frankly. And I think a lot of people, lots of sales people
because they are so few people that actually train – nobody knows how bad they
are. It’s crazy.

Ron: But one of the things I love hearing you say is. “Look, just because you have 18
years of sales experience doing the same thing over and over again for 18 years,
frankly you just have 1 year. You have 18 years of doing the same thing over and
over again.

How are you getting better? How are you improving yourself?

Jim: You have 1 year, 18 times. You have 1 year experience 18 times.

So it’s the same thing you play golf, I play golf, my brother plays golf all the time,
every week.

He has been playing for 20 years. He still doesn’t break 90. And I’m scratching my
head, thinking 20 years – you should be shooting par. I think you know, it’s not just
that you go through the motion, the play.


Are you doing it deliberately? Are you doing deliberate practice? Are you literally
trying to grow everyday?
And I think, you know, 8 years ago, 7 years ago – before the economy took a turn, I
think you could actually sit on the phone and take orders.

You didn’t have to sell. But today, our business is picking up and the reason is people
realize we don’t have sales people, we have order takers.

We have people who don’t pick up the phone and make a prospecting call effectively
and get an appointment. Then go in and close a deal. They have a hard time with
that.

And that’s what we are selling. It’s being proactive. We had it good for a while but
those times are gone. You have to be better today.

And I think it’s showing up in our training centers. Because our sales training centers
are filled now.

You’ve got to have to think about it. If you are listening to this call, that may be your
competitor sitting in there. You’ll ever know.

Ron: Jim, tell us something about the event coming up on March 6.

Jim: The event we have is a 2-hour workshop and we don’t charge anything for it. It’s
really like when you go to a store, you could look at all the ice cream. But it makes a
difference if someone lets you taste it.

I don’t think I’d want to spend $7 a gallon on ice cream unless I can taste it.

Here is how we do it. It’s not an infomercial where we lock you in a room and get
your credit card and say here’s why you should join Sandler.

It’s more of a – here’s a sales training, sales workshop and we give you a lot of things
that you could take away and use that day.

And at the end, if you want to talk to us based on what you saw in those 2 hours, you
certainly can come and talk to us.

If not, we’re not going to beat you and chase you. It’s up to you. But really, what it is,
is a 2-hour workshop on how to get around unpaid consulting, where people use
your quotes and proposals as a benchmark to shop around.

Or take it back to their current vendor or take your idea and do it in-house. Or
getting beat up on price -how to mitigate on price as an issue. Or how to not be a


pest. Or if you feel you are in a professional chase. Some of those issues that are part
of the traditional sales process, we address those.

Ron: Sounds like you really apply what it is that you talk about. And this workshop is
definitely a taste of that. I know I’ve attended in the past. And I’m a Sandler student.
And I highly recommend it.

Jim, really appreciate your time today. I know we’re running late here. But it was
very valuable. I really appreciate you coming in again.

Jim, how can people get a hold of you?

Jim: the best way to reach me is either jmattei@sandler.com or phone me at 847-
513-6260 extension 24. So those are two ways.

Ron: Jim, thank you again. We look forward to continuing to work over here. We
really appreciate your time.

Ryan, as always, thank you.

Ryan: Thank you Ron. Thank you Jim. Great stuff. Really appreciate it.

Jim: You’re welcome.

Ron: Take care.

Jim: Goodbye.


How to Improve your Sales Process – Interview with Jim Mattei at Sandler Sales Institute in Chicago

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How to Improve your Sales Process – Interview with Jim Mattei at Sandler Sales Institute in Chicago