David Mattson

As the first quarter comes to an end, it’s appropriate to review your department goals and measure your progress. Will your sales team hit the quarterly benchmarks for your department’s strategic initiatives? Have they made significant headway? Or, have they fallen behind already?

The explosion of social media has created lots of new opportunities for your company when it comes to sales prospecting. Utilizing the tools available to you can expand your business and be a source of continuous lead generation. Or it can cause a very embarrassing publicity nightmare. Here are five rules you should follow to cash in on social media opportunities and become a successful sales professional:

You might reason that with the appropriate education, training, direction, and encouragement, any one of your sales team members can become a top performer—a “superstar.”

The words "manager" and "leader" are often used interchangeably. But there's a difference in these two roles, as well as the workplace environments they create and the results they elicit. In today's blog post I will talk about the 10 defining leadership qualities that separate a leader from a manager.

Guest post by David Mattson and Brian Sullivan authors of Sandler Enterprise Selling: Winning, Growing and Retaining Major Accounts

Technology and the sales process have always been besties—the telephone, the typewriter, and the GPS were old friends of the traveling sales representative. Today's buyer's journey has evolved into online-heavy research and marketing, but technology—just a different sort—is still crucial to the sales process and its success.

Everyone who uses LinkedIn has a connection philosophy, though some people probably would have a hard time describing their philosophy in words. Maybe you’re one of those people who aren’t sure what your connection philosophy is. For those of you who sell for a living, we want to suggest that you make a conscious choice to adopt a connection philosophy that supports both you and your organization.

Imagine that there are four sales professionals standing in front of you, all of them with records of success. On paper, they all look outstanding. One of them is going to end up closing a six-figure sale with your company today. After watching their body language for a few minutes before presentations start, you can already tell that you're not likely to work with salespersons #1 and #3. These two people won't make eye contact; in fact, they seem to work hard to avoid it. They keep shifting on their feet, and #3 mops the sweat off his brow every few minutes. They talk at you (not to you), detailing the minutiae of their products. Clearly they’re more comfortable with their product than they are people.

The primary questions looming in the minds of prospects when they first talk with salespeople are, “What do you know about my company?” and “What do you know about my industry?”