Unlocking Sales Success: The Secrets Behind Sandler’s Unique Methodology

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to High Velocity Radio. I am your host Joshua Kornitsky, and I have an amazing guest here with me today. I can’t wait to introduce everybody to, uh, Amy Sulka. Amy is the president of Sandler by Sales Sellutions360. She works with organizations that want stronger, more predictable sales performance. Her work really focuses on the barriers that keep sales efforts from moving forward, and the structural changes that help teams sell with confidence and consistency. She brings a practical view shaped by what she sees inside growing companies. And today we’re going to explore some of the challenges that she deals with. Welcome, Amy. I’m so happy to have you here.

Amy Sulka: Thank you so much for inviting me to be on your program today.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, it’s a pleasure to have you. So I always like to start with the beginning, where, you know, what’s your origin story? How how how did sales become your field of expertise?

Amy Sulka: Well, it’s an interesting story. I have, uh, 25 years, uh, in the multifamily business in my first career, prior to buying my Sandler business. And so I was developing sales people in various capacities during that entire time, starting in the late 90s. So I’m dating myself a little bit here, training as a field trainer, training, uh, leasing consultants, featuring benefit selling for apartments. And then, uh, I moved into the supplier side of the business. And so I was selling services, uh, to multifamily owners and developers. And through that, I had formal mentorships, informal mentorships. I was an individual producer. I led sales teams I have done B2B, B2C. Complex solution sales, enterprise sales, uh, you name it, I’ve probably done it.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like you’ve got a pretty wide breadth of experience across. I don’t want to say all the, the aspects of sales, but a great many of them.

Amy Sulka: I have, uh, I have a lot of experience with a lot of different types of sales, a lot of different sales cycles, different industries, things of that nature. So when I say different industries, it was all within multifamily, but I sold advertising, I sold custom video production, I sold, uh, amenity services, I sold software. And so the who I was selling to were apartment owners and developers, but I sold different types of products and services for sure.

Joshua Kornitsky: So, Amy, it sounds like you really worked with a number of different capacities, albeit within several verticals of, of the multifamily and that type of industry. But how did that experience across those different domains, for lack of a better expression, help inform you to better be able to coach and to teach before we even get to Sandler, because you said you were you had your own sales teams.

Amy Sulka: So that’s an interesting question. That’s that’s an interesting story. So I had kind of worked myself into a position. Uh, I had become the EVP for a software company. And, you know, I was invited to come into this company, and I was like, I’m going to pour into the sales teams. I’m going to teach them everything I know about sales. We’re going to print money. It’s going to be amazing. As you probably know, that’s not really how leadership works at that level. And so sometimes I had gotten into a role where I wasn’t really able to do that. And I knew that that type of role wasn’t the right fit for me long term. And I also felt like going back into an individual producer position felt like going backwards. So I kind of felt stuck in some ways and I didn’t really know, like where to go. And uh, as circumstance would have it, uh, that company ended up selling to another company. And through that transition, um, I, along with a lot of the people at my company, were laid off. And so that ended up being a huge blessing. Didn’t feel like a blessing in the time, but it ended up being a blessing. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have had the space to go out and talk with the business broker who introduced me to Sandler. Um, one of the things that we talked about when we were evaluating what types of businesses might you want to buy, and I guess I skipped the part where I shared with my husband, hey, I don’t know if staying in multifamily is what I want to do anymore.

Amy Sulka: Maybe we should explore business ownership. And so we said, that sounds great. Do you want to build it or buy it? And I was like, I don’t know. So he, uh, he and I talked to a business broker and we, you know, they have you do these assessments, what do you want to do? And I was like, well, I’m good at two things. I know real estate. And I know, uh, how to develop salespeople. I’m good at sales. And so we looked at some opportunities in each of those categories. But I was not trained in Sandler originally. I have been trained professionally, trained in other sales methodologies. So when she introduced me to Sandler, I could tell that it was different, but I couldn’t really understand why. So I spent a fair amount of time and due diligence trying to understand it. And once I understood it, the light bulb went off and I realized all the bad sales habits that I had, that I didn’t know, that I had all the blind spots. And I decided, okay, well, this is an opportunity for me to do that. Those parts of the job that I love, which is working with the teams and developing the sales people without the parts that I don’t love, those management, things like, you know, having performance conversations and putting people on a plan and, you know, reviewing.

Joshua Kornitsky: The necessary parts of leadership.

Amy Sulka: Exactly.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, so it it sounds like from that downturn, great opportunity presented itself. And and after you evaluated it, you decided this was for you. So. So tell us what makes Sandler different. Your own words. You said that you’d been professionally trained, but you could tell Sandler was different. How how was it different than. I don’t want to give other examples. Just say we all know there’s many sales systems out there.

Amy Sulka: Well, there were a couple of things that I recognized as being different. So every other sales training that I’d ever had, it was presented kind of as a two day boot camp type of thing, which boot camps are a lot of fun? Sure. Come in and get a lot, you know, get fed with the fire hose and then you retain about 10% of what you learn, and you go back out in the field and immediately get put in the hot seat and forget everything that you learned, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Or you revert back to the bad habits you walked in with.

Amy Sulka: Exactly. Because there was no reinforcement, right? And I didn’t understand this even about Sandler like I got I’m embarrassed to admit this. I got all the way into deep into the conversation where I took a trip up to our corporate headquarters in Baltimore and still didn’t understand that Sandler wasn’t a two day boot camp. Oh, wow. And so I get up there and I’m still trying to understand how is it different? And they were like, no, we do reinforcement training over time. Like we’re giving you little chunks. And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. Um, so that was one thing. Um, the second thing is I had never been taught how to sell using a process. So for all the success that I had as an individual producer, I was really good at building relationships. I was great at prospecting. I was great at memorizing scripts and learning what questions to ask. But when the buyer would go off script. I didn’t really know how to stay in control of the sales call, and that was one of the things that I learned when I came to Sandler. When I saw the process, I was like, that’s why I lost that deal. That’s why I couldn’t get to that decision.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it forced you to be retrospective. You had to look back and see where things didn’t line up.

Amy Sulka: Dollar signs were just cha ching in my head, like all the money I had left on the table. It’s it’s embarrassing. Um, but as I realized, that’s why that deal fell apart at the last minute. Um, because I didn’t know to ask these questions. I didn’t know to do this, to stay in front of the sales call. Uh, so I’d never been taught to sell using a process. One of the things that I found to be different, all of the sales companies that I have been trained in would teach you technique. And technique is important. We spend a lot of time talking about technique also, and that’s what people want when they come to sales training. But technique by itself isn’t enough. Probably more than 50% of the success rate for most sellers is right here. It’s between the ears. It’s the mindset that they have. And I didn’t understand. Nobody had ever taught me about the mindset and how that influences and shapes your sales success. Uh, the third part of that, we call it our success triangle. So it’s technique attitude, which is the mindset and then the behavior okay. So you can do the behavior. But if you’re doing the behavior with the wrong mindset. And I’ll give you an example of what that might sound like. I don’t want to make cold calls because I don’t like getting cold calls. They don’t work. Nobody picks up their phone anymore. Well, if you have that belief about making cold calls, then that’s going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you’re not going to make any.

Joshua Kornitsky: Someone wiser than me once said that, that you manifest what you meditate on. And if you focus on the fact that cold calls don’t work, they’re never going to work, I guess.

Amy Sulka: Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’ve explained the, the three pillars so to say. And that’s my word not yours. So if I use the wrong terminology please feel free to correct me. Um, but help us understand that’s in just sales training. But Sandler’s a lot more than that, isn’t it?

Amy Sulka: Everything that we do is founded in communication skills. Really. If you think about what is a sales call, it’s a communication between two adults to get to the truth. So if we can improve the communication skills, if I can learn what are my own communication triggers that make me not communicate effectively, and then I can learn to recognize in someone else what are their preferred communication styles, and then what are the communication triggers that are taking this conversation off the rails. And I can get in front of that, then I can better control the The conversation.

Joshua Kornitsky: Is that something that you work with folks on even over the phone? Because my brain I when when you say that, I immediately think body language. But we don’t always have the advantage of of seeing people face to face. Is Sandler able to help people in, in every aspect of selling that way?

Amy Sulka: Yes. There’s there’s three main things that we talk about with the communication. So the words that we use represent 7% of how our message is received.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Amy Sulka: The other 93% is made up in the body language, as you mentioned, or the physiology and the tonality that we use. So even if you’re on the phone, you can interpret someone’s tonality. And if you think about how people speak to their pets. Pets don’t understand our verbal words, but they know if we’re mad.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yes they do.

Amy Sulka: They know if.

Joshua Kornitsky: They’re in.

Amy Sulka: Trouble, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: They certainly do. Yeah.

Amy Sulka: Cues are things with our active listening that we teach our sellers, um, to start to listen for in their sales meetings. And and so it’s not just the words, but it’s the way somebody phrases something that the sellers need to be able to sense. Okay, there’s some discomfort here. If I power through this and I don’t uncover whatever they’re, they’re uncomfortable about, we’re we can’t move forward. Like, we have to stop and address this. And so we just give them some language to say, hey, you know, should we pause for a second? Like, it sounds like, you know, maybe that that didn’t sit well. Or maybe you’ve got some questions.

Joshua Kornitsky: It it’s I want to ask this the right way. It seems like there’s a solid psychological and scientific foundation to a lot of what you’re sharing. Because I was in sales for 20 years and in my sales background, you know, we use the, the, the generic. Well, it’s a gut feeling. You know, deals going to happen, deals not going to happen. Um, and if and if they got wishy washy about it. They being the buyer, you just kept pushing. Sounds to me like there’s more to it.

Amy Sulka: Well, I, I was pretty successful in my prior career using that same methodology. Um, and I started to realize how much money I left on the table doing that. I mean, it works a fair amount of the time, but that’s not scalable, right? Absolutely. So we give our leaders some metrics that they can use to measure some questions to ask. Uh, one of the hardest things for me, when I was a, when I was leading sales teams, is being able to validate when you tell me this deal is coming in this month or this quarter. How do I know it’s real? I could never validate what was real and what wasn’t. Now I had certain reps that I worked with that their forecasts were more accurate than I trusted, a little bit more when they were would say, we had a great lunch like this is coming in. We really bonded. But I didn’t have the language at that point because I didn’t have Sandler yet to to know how to ask. Well, tell me what happened in your sales meeting that led you to believe that this opportunity is qualified to be able to close this this month or this quarter? And so now we’ve got the language. It was always here. I just didn’t know about it. Now we’ve got the language that we can give to the sales leaders to be able to validate what’s real and what’s not.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s not just process. It’s not just training. It’s also leadership training.

Amy Sulka: Yes.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. So so let’s let’s talk about for a minute to to help better understand if who what are the types of companies you typically work with size wise, or is there a profile or what’s your ideal size to work with?

Amy Sulka: So the clients that I work with are in any type of industry. They typically have sales teams, um, maybe 5 to 15 people I work with smaller, I work with larger. Um, that’s kind of the sweet spot where there’s not a lot of corporate red tape that needs to get involved in the decisions. Uh, but I do have larger and I do have smaller, and I’ve had solopreneurs come to me so we can work with any size company or any type of individual who wants to be able to, uh, learn better communication skills in the way. The reason that I phrased it that way, instead of saying people that want to learn to sell, is because I have had people come through my program that aren’t salespeople. They want to learn better communication skills because they’re still client facing, they’re still interacting with clients. And so they need to have the cross sell, upsell, um, abilities. And so maybe it’s not just sellers, but there’s other client facing people in the organization who can benefit as well. So the teams and the clients that I work with, I mentioned they’re already typically very good at what they do, but they’re looking to take a couple of strokes off their golf game. Okay. All right. So I’m not necessarily taking them and doing a complete overhaul. I mean, sometimes I am not usually, typically. We’re just tweaking some things to be able to shorten sales cycles, help them win more deals, help them win bigger deals, or help them learn how to prospect effectively and get more prospects in the pipeline. So we’re not making major changes typically.

Joshua Kornitsky: So understanding that it’s a generic question, what are some of the types of problems that people bring to you when they’re looking for help?

Amy Sulka: It depends on the size of the company. Uh, so larger companies, they are dealing with, um, complacency people, salespeople in comfort zones, and they don’t come to me and say, hey, my salespeople are in comfort zones. They come to me and say, hey, we don’t have enough leads, right? I’m like, okay, well, what does that mean? Because when I hear leads, I think marketing, I’m like, are we talking inbound leads? Are we talking outbound leads? Uh, well, we we just need more leads. Okay. So do you need more sales? Like, are your salespeople responsible for generating those leads? If they’re not going out and doing the prospecting activity, is it because they don’t want to? They know that they need to, but they don’t want to, and they’re just not doing it. Or is it because they’ve never been taught how? Is it because there’s no accountability for them to actually do that in their role? So there could be a variety of reasons that that’s not happening. So the first thing is we got to get to the real problem. That’s one of the big issues is prospecting effectiveness. Um, then we’ve got, uh, our people aren’t closing enough. I’m like, okay, cool. How do we know? And they’re like, well, my people need closing training. Like, okay, well, they’re not closing enough. There’s no magic talk track. I can teach them to get that deal over the finish line if they’ve messed up upstream. So let’s talk about your sales process. Tell me what’s happening. Where are they losing control of the deal. And so again, you know, that could be happening at various points during the sales cycle depending on what their their process looks like. So we’ve got prospecting effectiveness, not closing enough deals. Um, we’ve got negotiating effectiveness. Can’t access decision makers. Um, so there’s a lot of different issues that, that people have that they want to work on depending on their company.

Joshua Kornitsky: And at the risk, again, of understanding that the answer is largely it depends. But to to shed some insight, I’d like to ask how often is the problem that is brought to you what the actual problem is? So we’re going to we need we’re not closing enough. How often is that actually the problem versus it sounds like you do a fair amount of discovery work.

Amy Sulka: Yeah. So we have to realize we have to understand what’s the actual problem. So I’m not closing enough. That’s a symptom. That’s not a problem. So why aren’t we closing enough? Could be we don’t have enough deals in the funnel to begin with. Uh, well, why don’t we have enough deals in the funnel? Is it because, um. Is it because they’re not prospecting? They don’t know how. If they’re not closing enough, is it because we can’t get to the decision makers? Deals are stalling out. They’re getting ghosted. They don’t know how to negotiate. Um, so, I mean, there’s there could be different reasons, but I think we have to ask the question when you say you’re not closing enough, are you open to the idea that that’s the symptom, not the problem.

Joshua Kornitsky: Is the communication you’re demonstrating right now? Is that the type of of training you offer to the leadership to help them rather than, uh, going in and being, uh, just a consultant with a clipboard that that asks a bunch of questions. Do you teach them these skills? Because getting the answer once won’t solve the problem in the future.

Amy Sulka: We do. And so we have a proprietary pain funnel that, that we teach that kind of tells them the order of the questions. And so there’s a model of that that we teach in our sales leadership that models, the same kind of questioning that we teach for the sales training. But to be able to work in a coaching situation with their team in a debrief, maybe after a meeting to say, all right, well, let’s let’s kind of go go through and debrief what happened.

Joshua Kornitsky: That sounds like an enormously valuable skill to learn, because using your own analogy from from your previous sales life prior to learning the communication techniques, uh, it sounds like you can push your way through to a certain level of success, but without knowing how to get to the root of things, uh, you’re going to ultimately hit a wall.

Amy Sulka: Well, I, I share this, so I do a lot of, uh, speaking opportunities. And when I first started speaking, I was surprised that I would have audience members at the end of my speaking engagement who I’d never trained, never met before, stand up and give a raving testimonial about Sandler training that they took ten years ago from some somebody else, and they would be like, oh my gosh, this completely changed my life. After about the fifth or sixth time that that happened, it started to become normalized a little bit. But the first few times it happened, I was like, this is really cool. Like, tell me when you say Sandler changed your life. Like, what does that mean? It’s because the communication skills that we teach them to have better sales conversations and better coaching conversations with their team, they learn those skills, and then they have better coaching or better conversations at home with their spouse. And they learn how to get their kids to start opening up to them about how their day was, so that when they’re sitting at the dinner table and they’re like, how was your day? They get something better than just fine that.

Joshua Kornitsky: So I want to come back to that. But you said something that I do want to ask about. You said when doing speaking engagements, is that something that you’re open to still?

Amy Sulka: Yeah. So that that’s one of the biggest ways that I find new prospects for my own business. The thing about sales training, first of all, nobody ever has a budget for it, it seems. And, um, they don’t think that they need it because they, they have their own blinders on and they just think that things are the way that they are. And there’s not a version of better that they can imagine until they come to one of my workshops and then the light bulbs start going off and they’re like, that’s why that happened. Same thing that happened to me when I bought my business. And I was like, oh my gosh, that’s why that deal fell apart at the last minute. That’s why I couldn’t get to those decision makers. That’s why I’ve been losing control and getting ghosted and stalls and objections and all of this stuff. And so then it comes together and the light bulb goes off and they’re like, maybe we should talk.

Joshua Kornitsky: When people ask you what you do for a living, you should just tell them you turn on light bulbs.

Amy Sulka: I turn on light bulbs, I love it.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, so what type of engagements do you usually get from a speaking perspective? You know, what are you looking for? I should say so. So that anybody that’s hearing this knows that you’re available. Obviously you must do, you know, sales training or kickoffs, that type of thing.

Amy Sulka: I do, so I’m available for both free and paid speaking opportunities. And uh, whether it’s paid or free kind of depends on the type of event, the audience that’s going to be there and so forth, what the topic is. So there’s a there’s a few factors that go into that. But I have I am available to come in and do workshops, private workshops for companies, sales, kickoff meetings, conferences, uh, trade associations who are looking for speakers, um, either to come in for a lunch or some type of event.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. We’ll make sure when when we publish, we’ll have all of the contact links for you so that anyone that wants to engage you on the speaker side, never mind the Sandler side. Well, we’ll have that info for them. Um, so thank you for telling that because otherwise I never would have known. Turning back in on communication, the, the one of the questions that that’s kind of burning in in my mind is two questions. Question number one is this one size fits all with with what you bring. When I get that, you know, a ten person company versus a 10,000 person company, is it the same solution for both.

Amy Sulka: Yes and no. And so what I mean by that is the process that we teach. Whether you’re a solopreneur coming to me or you have ten salespeople or you have 5000 salespeople, the process that we teach is the same.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Amy Sulka: Now we have to massage that a little bit, because when I’m asking you about what problems you have, when you have sales training, those those questions that I ask or when you have sales training needs are going to sound different in my world, then they’re going to sound in your world or, you know, in somebody else’s world. So we have to take the framework and treat that kind of like training wheels. Across the framework of what we’re trying to do with it. But let’s come up with the top tracks and the language and the questions that actually make sense in your world. For your clients.

Joshua Kornitsky: That makes sense. So it’s tailored to the needs of of a ten person company selling widgets versus a 10,000 person company selling SaaS product. Exactly that. That makes sense. And then the other question that I have, because every as you said, there are many flavors of of sales training. This is communication training. Is it one and done. Do you spend, you know, an engagement of a couple of months with them, shake their hands and wish them well? How does it how does the engagement work?

Amy Sulka: Depends on the client and how much help they want. And so the way that I tend to describe this, do you play any instruments, Joshua.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, I play the stereo.

Amy Sulka: Okay. Well, I play the guitar.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Amy Sulka: And I took lessons. Guitar lessons for a number of years. And the first thing that you need to do when you’re learning to play an instrument. Before I can play a song, I have to learn to play a note.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

Amy Sulka: And I learned to play a group of notes called a chord. Then I can start to play several chords, but I can’t necessarily play a song. Or when I play a song like it’s row, row, Row Your Boat or something.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s foundational building.

Amy Sulka: And then the more I practice and the more repetitions I get of playing those chords together in a sequence, now I can play songs. I can play harder songs, longer songs, more difficult songs. Sales training is kind of like that. So depending on how much help the client wants, some people just want a boot camp.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Amy Sulka: That’s fine. Like, we’re going to have a conversation about what type of behavioral change you’re going to get out of a one, 1 or 2 day boot camp. But sometimes they just want me to come in for an event for a sales kickoff meeting. And that’s the end of the engagement. And that’s fine. Um, most companies are going to want that reinforcement training over time. And so we have solutions for that. And the duration. There’s there’s no finish line. It’s um you know how much change do you want. Do you plan to continue to add new people to your sales team as your company grows? Are you going to be promoting leaders? So ideally I’m going to grow with them. And as their sales team gets better, they’re going to be growing and scaling and opening new markets and offering new products and, um, calling on bigger accounts. And there’s going to be a need for us to grow together.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds like in an optimal engagement, it’s it’s a parallel path of you help them continue to grow. Um, because the word you use that caught my attention is, is reinforcement. Having been through many flavors of different trainings, often it was one and done. And in the universe I live in now, one and done doesn’t get a lot accomplished because you’ve got to have repetition. You’ve you’ve got to have reinforcement. Because to your own example earlier people can become complacent because I’m selling, you know, I’m hitting my quota. What else do you want from me? Isn’t everybody? But there is the occasional sales person who takes that perspective, and chances are that’s not really what they want. That’s just where they’ve settled in.

Amy Sulka: Well, that one rep who’s sitting there hitting their sales quota and it’s like, I’m doing fine. Like, why do I need this? Because we call this hostages in my world, um, that happens. And the hostages may be doing fine with sales. Um, but that’s not scalable. That’s not duplicatable. We we have to have a process. And so sometimes I’ll ask leaders, are you managing one process across ten people or are you managing ten different processes?

Joshua Kornitsky: Ooh, that’s a really good question. And and that speaks right to the heart of it because I understand at a high level the value of having that that process. You keep using this word scalability. And while most people, I think would define scalability as sort of the example from earlier of, you know, you’re going to help them continue to grow, but scalability is, is that only growth or is that also sort of to your point, new products, new offerings? Is that also with or depth, not just up?

Amy Sulka: Well, the way that I define it, I think you and I probably define it similarly based on your description you just gave. We can grow meaning we can get more revenue by cross-selling up selling the existing clients that we have if we want to scale. Scaling may be opening new markets, offering new product offerings, bringing more people onto our team, growing our team. And so that looks different than growth by itself.

Joshua Kornitsky: I think that’s a great point. And I would ask is based on your experience, and I know we have a lot of it depends, but based on your experience is, is that an area that’s usually front of mind for an organization that the idea of, of selling in rather than more?

Amy Sulka: I think every organization has their own things that they want to deal with. Uh, again, nobody comes to sales training, at least most of my prospects. They don’t come to sales training with a budget already in mind, because by the time they realize they need it, they’re in trouble in some way. And so revenue is flat, revenue is declining. We’re trying to get in front of it and so is it forefront. I mean, yes, I mean, most most of the clients that I work with are growth minded. Uh, and they’re they’re looking to be able to grow and scale. And sometimes they, come to me and that’s the opportunity that they see. With sales training. I think more often than not it’s the opposite problem, which is, um, tariffs are affecting the economy right now. We’ve got, uh, rising health care costs, eating into margins. We’ve got inflation, we’ve got interest rates. Um, you know, we’ve got all of these things that are giving salespeople new excuses to say.

Joshua Kornitsky: Why I can’t get it done.

Amy Sulka: Why I can’t get the sale done. And so every single deal in the pipeline has become more urgent and more relevant than ever. Right. And there’s more eyes on this trying to say, okay, what’s real in this pipeline? What’s not? I think people are realizing we’ve had order takers or people don’t actually know how to sell now that the economy’s turned and these deals aren’t just coming across our desk openly and freely. So what do we do that’s more typical? What I’m dealing.

Joshua Kornitsky: With. Well, and so I want to latch on to one of the last things that you said. And I think this this rounds us out perfectly. You you’ve given us a couple of indications, but how what are the things anybody listening right now or anybody watching the video? What are some of the early things that they that should make them think now is the time to act and to reach to Amy, to to have the conversation and to understand. You had said things like revenue going flat. What are 1 or 2 other indicators that if I’m a sales leader or, uh, you know, VP or director of sales, that as I’m looking at my numbers other than trending down, which is a flashing red light already, are there other things that that should be the impetus to pick up that phone?

Amy Sulka: Well, one of the first places that I encourage sales leaders to look is in the pipeline, right? So do we have a lot of fluff in the pipeline? And if we have fluff in the pipeline, meaning we’ve got a lot of opportunities, but there’s opportunities aren’t converting or if those deals are just getting pushed out. Is it because our team doesn’t have the skills to be able to get them over the finish line? Are they maybe doing a lot of prospecting? They’re going on a lot of coffee meetings, one on ones. They’re getting a lot of first meetings, but not a lot of second meetings.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

Amy Sulka: Um, so that that could be an upskilling opportunity. Sometimes I will hear things that sound like, ah, people don’t have a sales problem or sales are fine. If our team would just follow up on the stuff that’s already in the pipeline. I’m like, again, follow up or lack of follow up isn’t the the problem that is a symptom of a broken sales process, and people don’t recognize it as a symptom of a broken sales process, because what’s happening is the sales reps are leaving their sales opportunities open ended. They shouldn’t need to follow up. They should always have a next step.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right? That’s that’s that’s true gold right there. I know there’s no magic wand. Uh, but that in that piece of information right there, that was that was worth some money. So thank you. Amy. Um, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Amy Sulka: Well, I’ve got information on my website which I. Or they’re going to show notes. You’ll drop the link. Um, so, uh, both on the sales training as well as speaking opportunities on the website, people can email me, uh, Amy Smolka at Sandler Comm. I’m sure you’ll leave my contact information notes as well.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, any other points before we go that that you want to make sure that we cover? Because I think part of my challenge when it comes to sales is like a lot of sales, old, retired, I’ll say salespeople is we think we know all the questions to ask. And it turned out, uh, there was a lot more communication training needed.

Amy Sulka: Yeah. Uh, the only other thing I would add is, uh, if you want to add my LinkedIn profile. I’d love to connect with people on LinkedIn. I actually had a lot of training tips and techniques on my LinkedIn, so if people want to follow me there, I’ve got a lot of content that comes.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s awesome. Um, and that’s another bit of of help. First mindset to, to really put it out there to help people. Amy, I can’t thank you enough. I learned a lot. Uh, I learned that I need to work on my communication, and I look forward to the book you’ll write. Um, it’s it’s really incredible. What a difference. And if I may add, you demonstrated something that I’m always working on. You demonstrated fantastic listening skills, um, which I’d meant to comment on earlier. When when you were making one of your points. And I presume that, too is part of what you train on.

Amy Sulka: It is. But thank you for noticing.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s it’s it seems it’s so deceptively simple that it’s hard to to not be thinking about the next question and instead to ingest the answer. Um, we are all surrounded by it. I can’t thank you enough. My guest today has been Amy Sulka. She’s the president of Sandler by Sales Solutions 360. She works with organizations that want stronger, more predictable sales performance. Her work focuses on the barriers that keep sales efforts from moving forward, and the structural changes that help teams sell with confidence and consistency. She brings a breadth of experience with her and a whole lot of wisdom and knowledge. Amy, I can’t thank you enough. It’s been a joy to have you.

Amy Sulka: Thank you for having me on.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for joining us for a wonderful episode of High Velocity Radio. I’m your host, Joshua Kornitsky. We’ll see you next time.