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Eric Bartholomeus

I have been in sales 30+ years now, and never considered myself as a “natural”. Had to work for it. Facing cold calling tasks, I remember vividly how a simple telephone can weigh as much as a 1000 kg and how one can move a Kompass database from the left side of a desk to the right for hours –in these days there was no email to find the perfect excuse neither. But I had to do it. There were days that I was flying, and others when I fell in a black hole, and I praise myself lucky to be surrounded by excellent managers – who became friends.

Through the years, I struggled with friendly prospects who never bought, and I did not understand. I spent hours trying to convince them that my features and benefits were the best. I gave dazzling presentations and demo’s, they told me they never heard something like this before – and they bought from somebody else. Or they had no money, and required me to lower my prices so that I hardly made a profit. They kindly asked me to call them back after the summer holidays, and seemed vanished in smoke when I did. I had millions of sales – in my funnel. I was a prisoner of hope, and I believed it was normal in my business.

Through the years I developed an intuition, and I started to tell upfront after I introduced myself that I was the most expensive kid on the block, and advised them to consider buying from my competitor perhaps – at which point they told me they rather do business with me and never asked for a discount neither. Or told me that is was over, and that was fine also. I painfully discovered ways to deal with large key accounts, buying committees and tenders. And how to behave properly in meeting a prospect in the lobby. But I was never able to reconstruct this successful behaviors properly . I found out that I needed a system. And I found Sandler Training.

I know now that the most important thing is to develop trust with your prospects. And sales just start to happen.

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Karen Massin

The first ½ of my career I worked in International Purchasing and the last ½ in Sales and in Business Development Management functions.

As a buyer I went to a lot of negotiating trainings where I learned how to get leverage over the salesperson, so that I could get enormous price discounts while at the same time I got tons of free consultancy.

In the beginning of my sales career I had to find my way again because I am not a born salesperson.

I took several sales trainings but after 10 years I developed a kind of dislike against sales trainings in general because they were all alike and offered techniques I couldn’t live with – pushy, sleazy etc.

Finally I took almost by accident a Sandler sales training which learned me that you cannot sell anybody anything. Prospects have to convince themselves. Bingo, that was the missing link, and it certainly changed my life as a salesperson.

Some of the multinational companies I have worked for on behalf of Quasar or as an employee: Tenneco in Brussels, Fratelli D'Amato (ship brokers) in Naples, De Ster (injection moulding for aviation) www.dester.com in Hoogstraten.

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