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10/29/2026

Here's a hard truth for sales managers, and I've been guilty of it too: most of what we call coaching is really deal review.

We ask about the opportunity, offer an opinion on the next move, and call that development. The deal might move forward. The seller doesn't change. When coaching does happen, it usually goes to whoever is loudest or whatever feels urgent, not to the skill that's actually holding the rep back.

On November 4, Sandler is hosting Closing the Adoption Gap: The New Science of Sales Skill Development, a webinar on using objective performance data to decide who to coach and on what. If coaching time is the most valuable hour on your calendar, you should know it's going to the right place.

Register to attend live or to get the replay:
https://info.sandler.com/closing-the-adoption-gap?nbcrefid=f44668740

10/28/2026

The most frustrating outcome in sales isn't losing to a competitor. It's losing to nothing — a prospect who seemed genuinely interested, then goes completely silent.

Usually, "no decision" doesn't mean the prospect didn't care. It means the pain was never fully uncovered, so when priorities shifted or budgets tightened, there was nothing strong enough anchoring them to act.

Sandler's approach front-loads this work: making sure the cost of the problem is clear and owned by the buyer long before a proposal is ever sent. When the pain is real and understood, "no decision" becomes far less common — because doing nothing has a real, felt cost.

Ghosting isn't usually a communication problem. It's a discovery problem that shows up later.

The real problem happened three steps earlier…

10/26/2026

Your Q4 discount is teaching your buyers to wait for Q4.

Every December it goes the same way. The rep is short, the manager is short, and somebody offers 15% off if they sign by the 31st. The deal closes. Everyone exhales.

Next year, that same buyer stalls until December. Why wouldn't they? You showed them how it works.

A discount to hit a number feels like closing. Most of the time it means the rep never found a reason for the buyer to act that had anything to do with the buyer. No real pain, no real cost of waiting, so price is the only lever left to pull.

If your team needs a discount to create urgency, the problem happened a lot earlier in the conversation.

Go look at how much of last December's revenue came with a discount on it. I'll wait.

10/23/2026

Win rate, pipeline coverage, and quota attainment are useful numbers. But I've never seen a seller improve because their manager told them their win rate was low.

Those metrics tell you something went wrong. They don't tell you what the seller did, or didn't do, to get there. That's why so many pipeline reviews end with “push harder” and nothing changes.
In Closing the Adoption Gap: The New Science of Sales Skill Development, Sandler's Seth Marrs and Sunshine Levin dig into how to look past the scoreboard to the specific behaviors behind your results, so you have something you can actually coach. Worth an hour on November 4 if your reviews feel like a rerun.

All registrants get the replay: https://info.sandler.com/closing-the-adoption-gap?nbcrefid=f44668740

10/21/2026

Most 2027 sales plans are just 2026 with a bigger number.

Same team. Same habits. Same pipeline problems. And a revenue target somebody bumped up 15% in a spreadsheet. Then everyone acts surprised in March.

If you're putting next year together right now, ask yourself one thing before you sign off on the plan. What are your people actually going to do differently? Working harder doesn't count.

That's my colleague Aaron in the photo, running one of our sessions. The easiest way to figure out whether training belongs in your 2027 plan is to sit in on a class and see what happens in the room. No pitch and no commitment. Just come watch how we work with real salespeople and managers on real deals.

You can grab a guest pass here: https://info.sandler.com/marketing-sitelet-offers-crash-a-class?nbcrefid=f44668740

Come see it for yourself before the budget gets locked in. Worst case, you walk out with a few ideas to steal.

10/19/2026

Your prospect didn't ghost you. You gave them permission to.

It's Halloween season, so let's talk about the most common ghost story in sales. Great first meeting. The prospect loved it. "Send me a proposal." You send it. Then nothing. Three follow-ups, a "just checking in," a "bumping this to the top of your inbox." Silence.

Here's what usually happened. Nobody agreed on what came next. There was no date on the calendar, no clarity on who else had to weigh in, and nobody told the prospect it was perfectly fine to say no.

That last one matters more than people think. Buyers disappear because saying no feels awkward. Tell them up front that a no is fine and most of them will actually give you one. A clear no beats a pipeline full of haunted maybes every time.

Before you leave any meeting, get the next step on the calendar and agree on what happens if it's not a fit.

Everybody has that one prospect they chased way too long. How many follow-ups before you finally gave up?

10/16/2026

Promoting your best salesperson to sales manager is usually a two-for-one loss.

I see it constantly. Someone crushes quota three years running, so the owner hands them a team. Six months later the team's numbers are flat, the new manager is frustrated, and you've lost your top producer.

Selling and coaching are different jobs. Great reps win by doing. Great managers win by getting other people to do it, which usually means biting your tongue on a call you could close yourself in five minutes.

Most new managers never get taught how to coach. So they do what they know. They jump in, rescue the deal, and the rep learns nothing except to wait for the next rescue.

If you're promoting someone into leadership for 2027, ask something harder than whether they can sell. Would they rather win the deal or build the person?

Think back to your first sales manager. Coach or closer?

10/14/2026

Your expertise is costing you deals.

Every Halloween there's one kid who sprints up the driveway, trips on the last step, and dumps the whole pumpkin of M&Ms on the porch before anyone even opens the door.

I watch salespeople do the same thing every week. The prospect mentions one problem and out comes everything. The case studies, the features, the pricing, the "we've solved this for a dozen companies just like yours."

It feels like you're adding value. What you've actually done is answer a question nobody finished asking.

The first problem a prospect brings up is rarely the real one. "We need more leads" usually turns out to be a conversion problem, or a follow-up problem, or a sales manager who never has time to coach. Present on leads and you've built a great solution to the wrong issue.

So before any candy comes out of the bucket, I want to know four things. What's really going on. What it's costing the business. What they're willing to invest to fix it. And who gets a say in the decision.

Stay curious longer than feels comfortable. The presentation gets shorter and the close gets a lot easier.

I wrote more about it here: https://go.sandler.com/trustpoint/insights/blog/categories/sales-process/dont-spill-your-candy-in-the-lobby-/

I'll admit I was a candy spiller for years. Anyone else?

10/12/2026

"Most sales managers think they're coaching. What they're really doing is asking ""where are we on that deal?"" and calling it a one-on-one.

At our recent regional meeting, I led a session for fellow Sandler coaches on our Coach to Success model. It's a simple framework, and simple is the point, because coaching only works if you'll actually do it every week.

It runs in four steps. Assess what's really going on, using what you've observed, your leading and lagging indicators, and good questions. Establish better options, whether that's a new behavior, a different attitude, or a technique the rep hasn't tried yet. Define the next steps and the accountability, for the salesperson and for the coach. Then execute, follow up, and keep the feedback loop going so the rep gets more, better, and different results over time.

The feedback and collaboration in that room were energizing. Just about everyone had a story about a manager who wanted to coach and was never shown how.

Helping sales leaders succeed is our passion. Days like that one remind me why.

Think about your last one-on-one. How much of it was actually coaching?

Curious how the model would work on your team? DM me and I'll walk you through it.

10/09/2026

Someone on your team has already checked out of 2026.

You've heard the lines. "Nobody buys in December." "Let's just set something up for January." It sounds reasonable, and it's how teams leave real money on the table every year.

The deals you need this year are mostly already in front of you. They're in accounts you already have, in proposals that went quiet over the summer, and in the part of the pipeline nobody has touched since spring.

The teams that finish strong get tactical about going deeper with current customers and reopening old conversations. They get honest about their data so they know who's likely to buy and when. And they make sure every person is working toward a goal they care about, not just the number on the whiteboard.

We put together a short guide with 10 strategies for closing the year strong. It's free.
Here it is: https://info.sandler.com/marketing-sitelet-whitepaper-10-effective-strategies-for-closing-the-year-strong?nbcrefid=f44668740

I'd bet there's at least one deal on your board that deserves another real conversation before December. Maybe two.

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