implements go well beyond professional development. Claudia recalls how Jim would come on site and tell her how he’d use Sandler at home. “I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to use Sandler in my personal life,’” she says. But that idea was quickly blown out of the water. “I’d ask my kids, ‘Are you sure that’s the right way to go forward?’ and help make them the rock star of the conversation.” Sandler Training has helped Claudia so much that it has become a running joke with her children. “They look at me with this raised eyebrow like, ‘Mom, I know what you’re doing,’” Claudia says. Jim tells a similar story, where his kids say, “Stop Sandlerizing me!” Jim still Sandlerizes his children to this day, as Sandler Training is a family business for him. Claudia also continues to Sandlerize her family. “My dad is 92 and is amazing. He can be crotchety and difficult … and [Sandler] works.” We’re proud to work with such phenomenal people and can’t wait to see the continued breakthroughs of Lumencor. Even to this day, their technology has new and innovative uses for it. In fact, the Library of Congress commissioned Lumencor to design an instrument that allows old source material to be listened to without damaging it. This technology allowed the very first recordings of Alexander Graham Bell to be published. Head online to the Library of Congress website, which is available to the public, to hear these recordings.
SANDLER + CLAUDIA = NEW LEVELS OF SUCCESS
Implementation of Sandler’s principles takes a significant amount of commitment. It’s two hours of training, but that time would often be wasted in a typical day without it anyway. That two-hour investment pays off with days of saved time and an increased level of accountability. If a goal is discussed during a Sandler coaching call, that goal will be followed up on during the next conversation with your coach. Sandler provides coaching to Lumencor’s entire team, and it has given Claudia an insight into both new hires and existing team members. The way they respond to role- playing exercises is particularly insightful. “[Role playing] is the biggest challenge for everyone. It’s intimidating. It takes some humility to do that and make some mistakes, but it’s essential,” says Claudia. “You will have staff members who will not participate in a routine way. They will fail to attend, and that is very telling.” According to Claudia, her best hires have been people with an open mind and little to no sales experience. “We hired quite a lot of people with the mindset that they had a background in sales, so they could sell,” she explains. “Actually, the most successful people we have are not salespeople.” If you’re trying to sell — opposed to customers asking for your product — you aren’t doing it right.
“Depending on the channel, [ROI]
is a different number. But in any case, sales needs to know what that calculation is and what they’re doing to achieve the milestones that are mutually set up for them to achieve,” says Claudia. “What [firing] forced us to do was prioritize in the funnel where we were going to spend our time — what accounts to groom for growth and where to find new business. We’re a smaller team now, but we do more sales, and it costs us a fraction of what it used to.” One of the major concepts Sandler preaches is ongoing reinforcement training. Progress is about small incremental change over a period, but this concept isn’t always immediately embraced. Many people expect a seminar to provide instant solutions, but if you’ve read our most famous book, you understand why we believe that is not the path to true change. Even Claudia had her reservations about it. “I had a lot of hesitation. It was unproven to me when I got started. I read my first Sandler book, ‘You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar,’ and I felt like if I was really unhappy with it, I could bring that up.” Fortunately, Claudia never reached that point, and she saw an immediate impact. “It became obvious in the first couple sessions there was a lot to learn. It was almost an overload, like drinking from a firehose.”
STOP SANDLERIZING ME!
Jim Stephens, president and CEO of Crossroads Sandler, is a firm believer that the methodologies Sandler
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