Special Edition 2006, Selling Power Magazine
The Wow Factor - Dashboard and Presentation Technology
May 2003, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Supervising
April 2003, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Planning and Tracking.
March 2003, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Communication.
February 2003, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Managing Your People.
January 2003, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Hiring the "Best Fit" Candidate.
December 2002, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Five Steps to a Perfect Interview.
November 2002, Cabling Business Magazine
Building an Organization that Sells - Recruiting-Selecting the Right Candidate.
February 2002, Inc Magazine
"Training can help keep salespeople on the straight and narrow and away from depressing thoughts. So fight the urge to delete all training from the budget. "Sales training has made a difference for us," Verdie Williams, president of Facilitek Office Furniture Systems, a $20-million dealer of Haworth office furniture. "It has helped keep my eight salespeople focused. There are not distracted by headlines. Even though business is down, there are still projects out there. Training helps us listen better. We're thinking about ways to help customers rather than selling them." Must be working. After suffering several dark quarters last year, Facilitek saw daybreak: in the fourth quarter its number of new accounts was actually about 25% higher than the figure for the same quarter in 2000.
Williams uses the Sandler Sales system. New recruits undergo Sandler training weekly while the whole sales team attends half-day sessions quarterly. In between, Williams holds weekly in-house meetings that reinforce the lessons and help keep them fresh. One Sandler theme is how to deal with rejection. "We talk about how to get back on track, how to focus again. Salespeople have to fight the urge to give the stuff away. Commissioned salespeople are under the most stress. We don't want our salepeople to feel like they have the world on their shoulders," Williams says."