About Brian Jackson:Brian Jackson is the Owner of The Sandler Sales Coaching Program and a sales coach of the Sandler Methodology since 2006. His passion is helping seasoned, professional salespeople reach their greatest potential – both personally and professionally – by watching them win. Before owning Sandler Training, Brian invested over 20 years in healthcare equipment & SAAS sales, having served the most recent 12 years in various leadership roles. He enjoys coaching Owners, Executives, and all customer-facing, “selling” people within the Technology/SAAS vertical. Also, Brian has spoken on a wide variety of business and personal development topics and is available to speak at corporate events, trade shows, etc. Check out the latest episode of our Conversational Selling podcast to learn more about Brian.
In this episode, Nancy and Brian discuss the following:
- A nerd at heart: the sales nature of Brian Jackson.
- The art of persuasion is all about selling, and the selling is all about communication.
- Brian’s way of getting into Sandler’s world.
- What differentiates Sandler from other sales methodologies?
- Features and benefits versus consultative selling.
- DISC and Sandler go hand in hand.
- Useful tricks to learn from DISC.
Key Takeaways:
- Not many people grow up saying, “I want to be in sales,” but I’m one of those.
- I always knew that in the back of my mind, being a Sandler trainer was something I could do and enjoy, so here I am.
- Take advantage of the technology out there to prepare for your conversations.
- If you’re a salesperson, you do not need to feel so much pressure to be the one to convince, persuade, and manipulate others magically.
- Sandler takes your career to another level.
“ Be the contrarian salesperson. Get out of your way. Stop trying to sell, persuade, and manipulate people. Stop trying to script out what you’re going to say. Instead, guide people on a path of self-discovery instead of trying to convince them. Go for the no. Guide them to self-discovery. Let them argue with you why they have the problems you solve and why they should be committed to fixing them. My favorite saying in the rule is, “People do not argue with their own data.” To finish answering your question, I believe the art and the science of selling are to guide people on that path of self-discovery because they don’t argue with their own data. And if you can do that, then you don’t have the objections in the first place.” – BRIAN.
“Sandler is important in personal communication because you want other people to feel that they’re heard, understood, and prioritized. Like you said, selling is not about you. It’s about the other person. So, there’s no question that people like me who have bought into the standard franchise model or participants see improvements in our relationships just as much as we see improvements in our selling efforts because it’s a different way that we treat people in our communication because of understanding Sandler. ” – BRIAN.
“When I’m teaching DISC, I explain to people that once you know DISC, you can’t go through your life the same way ever again. I’ll be in the grocery store checkout aisle and overhear a conversation. I’ll know somebody’s DISC style. You know, when I meet somebody, I can subconsciously register their eye color, hair color, ethnicity, background, and distance. And you treat people how they would want to be treated. You’re going to ask why it is so important. You’re going to keep your conversation short and tight, to the point, focus on, you know, you’re going to dab naturally. And that’s just critical to selling.” – BRIAN.
Connect with Brian Jackson:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandlertraining/
- Sandler:https://www.salesrevenue.sandler.com/
Try Our Proven, 3-Step System, Guaranteeing Accountability and Transparency that Drives RESULTS by clicking on this link: https://oneofakindsales.com/call-center-in-a-box/
Connect with Nancy Calabrese:
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/oneofakindsales
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/One-Of-A-Kind-Sales-304978633264832/
- Website: https://oneofakindsales.com
- Phone: 908-879-2911
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ncalabrese/
- Email: leads@oneofakindsales.com
Voiceover: You’re listening to The Conversational Selling Podcast with Nancy Calabrese.
Nancy Calabrese: Hi everyone, it’s Nancy Calabrese and it’s time again for Conversational Selling, the podcast where sales leaders and business experts share what’s going on in sales and marketing today. And it always starts with the human conversation. Today, we’re speaking with Brian Jackson, owner of the Sandler sales coaching program. A sales coach of the Sandler Methodology since 2006, his passion is helping seasoned professional salespeople reach their greatest potential, both personally and professionally by watching them win. Brian has accrued over 25 years of sales, sales leadership, and consulting experience. He has personally closed over $100 million of new business throughout his career and he has proudly hired and mentored several leaders of enterprise sales organization. Brian’s sales coaching business has served over a thousand participants achieving results with any revenue-generating professionals. Welcome to the show, Brian. You know I love Sandler.
Brian Jackson: Thank you, Nancy. It’s good. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. [1:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, so in doing some homework on you, you call yourself a nerd at heart. Why is that?
Brian Jackson: Well, I mean, you know, when you’re short fat kid with braces and glasses and you have to learn how to talk away out of fighting that content that qualifies you as being a nerd but I’m a sales nerd. My dad was in sales, in sales leadership. I am kind of a weird case study in that I’ve kind of known that I was going to go into sales from a pretty young age just because I saw my dad’s lifestyle working from home and doing well financially so there are not a lot of people who grew up saying “I want to be in sales” but I’m one of those “So here I am now sales coach and I do love coaching salespeople”. [2:08]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Well, it’s funny, I think everybody is in sales whether they admit it or not. The art of persuasion is all about selling and the selling is all about communication, right?
Brian Jackson: Right. Yep, I agree with you 100%.
Nancy Calabrese: So, what made you get involved in Sandler?
Brian Jackson: Well so I was dragged kicking in screaming in the Sandler back into 2006 because I was uh… another twenty-year-old hot shot that never failed in any sales job but I was told that hey you have to go through Sandler if you’re going to be in our sales leadership bench and ultimately once I got into Sandler, I realized how different it is compared to other methodologies and different sorts of training programs. And because of its sort of purity and consultative nature, it’s the opposite of traditional selling, I took on to it and became very passionate about it. And eventually, you know, when I wanted to be my businessman, I always knew that in the back of my mind being a Sandler trainer was something that I could do and that I would enjoy, so here I am. [3:19]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. So why is Sandler’s different than other sales methodologies?
Brian Jackson: Boy, there’s so much to that question, right? But it goes back to the beginning I mean it’s kind of an interesting story if you read about you know what David Sandler went through before starting center key, he went to countless sales coaching training workshops and found that they were just teaching salespeople to go out and say the same scripty things, so he stumbled across this book begins people play which is what gave birth to transactional analysis sort of a paradigm of psychology that it gives us more or less a predictable model of human behavior and he said you know what I can apply this to selling and so what it comes to is this is that in Sandler we have a rule: “If other salespeople are doing it stop!”. [4:21]
Nancy Calabrese: Right.
Brian Jackson: Be the contrarian salesperson. Get out of your way. Stop trying to sell, persuade, and manipulate people. Stop trying to script out what you’re going to say. Instead, guide people on a path of self-discovery instead of trying to convince them. Go for the no. Guide them to self-discovery. Let them argue with you as to why they have the problems that you solve and why they should be committed to fixing them. And my favorite saying in the rule is that: “People do not argue with their own data”, to finish answering your question. I believe the art and the science of selling are to guide people on that path of self-discovery because they don’t argue with their own data. And if you can do that, then you don’t have the objections in the first place. [5:09]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Features and benefits versus consultative selling. What are your thoughts on that?
Brian Jackson: Well, one of the things I liked about your website and your LinkedIn page when I was sort of researching and doing some background on your NANCY is you talked about how you broker Conversational Selling, right? And you know, feature benefit selling is a monologue, right? It’s a, hey, you know, feature benefit selling is a monologue, right? Here’s my pitch and that’s a lot of that’s not a conversation is you’re giving information in their gathering information so I knew this is going to come up in our conversation Nancy there’s a Sandler Rule which is that you prove your value as a salesperson not by the information that you disperse but by the information that you gather that’s how you prove your values as a person so that only happens when you can have a conversation and when you can keep your prospect talking the majority of the time guiding them on that path of self-discovery that’s your question. [6:17]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, to me, selling is all about them, not about us. The way you learn and understand your prospect’s needs is through the quality of the questions that you ask, right? Wouldn’t you agree?
Brian Jackson: Yep. 100%. Yes, absolutely.
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. And why is Sandler important in personal communication?
Brian Jackson: Oh man, personal communication. I mean, it’s important because you want other people to feel that they’re heard, that they’re understood, and that they’re prioritized. Like you said, selling is not about you. It’s about the other person. So, there’s no, no question that people like me who have bought into the standard franchise model or participants we see improvements in our personal relationships just as much as we see improvements in our selling efforts because it’s a different way that we treat people in our communication because of understanding Sandler. [7:30]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, it kind of also ties into DISC, which I love. And I know you’re a big proponent of why DISC is so important in communication.
Brian Jackson: I don’t know. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, DISC and Sandler go hand in hand. You know, when I’m teaching DISC, I explain to people that once you know DISC, you can’t go through your life the same way ever again. I’ll be in the grocery store checkout aisle and I’ll, and I’ll overhear a conversation. I’ll know somebody’s DISC style. You know, like, so when I meet somebody, I can register subconsciously their eye color, their hair color, their ethnicity, their background, and their distance, you know? And you just treat people the way that you, that they would want to be treated. You’re going to, why is it so important. You’re going to keep your conversation short and tight, to the point, focus on, you know, you’re going to dab naturally. And that’s just, obviously, that’s critical to selling. [8:41]
Nancy Calabrese: Yep. I love DISC. You know, it’s interesting when you mentioned, especially from a personal point of view, that I know my daughter’s DISC style. And I know because I understand her way of communication, I get more out of her. She doesn’t know I know that. But it’s just amazing to me.
Brian Jackson: Yes. Nancy, have you noticed that you know how they say opposites attract? I think some people think that the wrong way. Like they think that like people with opposite political views or things like that. I think what they’re talking about is DISC because I’ve noticed that couples often have opposite DISC styles. In my case, I’m a high DC or CD, and my wife is the opposite. She’s like an IS, and that makes sense, right? It makes sense because we kind of fill each other’s gaps. We make a good team in that way. But then there’s also a lot of, there can be a lot of friction when, I can be very direct about things and she sometimes does not express herself and I see that in a lot of relationships, opposite disc style. So going back to what you said, obviously Sandler, DISC, is very, very relevant to not just selling but your own life. [10:10]
Nancy Calabrese: You know, you remind me, I was dating a fellow. I’m a high D and he’s a C. And that’s about the time when I was introduced to DISC. Anyway, that relationship didn’t go very far. He drove me crazy.
Brian Jackson: Maybe a little too much overlap, too much head-banging.
Nancy Calabrese: Uh, way too much. Yeah, way too much. So, is there anything in particular you would like me to spotlight? Anything going on with your organization that you want to share?
Brian Jackson: Well, I’ll tell you one thing I’m just really proud of being a part of Sandler’s we’re really on top of our game in terms of all the technology innovations and technology disruptions to modern selling. We’re having a virtual summit, which is a half-day event on October 11th. And it’s birthed from about two months ago, we did a webinar on how to use chat GPT to drive more sales revenue. That webinar registered over 5,000 participants, which is crazy. Yeah, and so they said: “Hey, to their credit, let’s expand on this”. So, they’re doing this virtual summit on October 11th, and I’ve already invited all my past clients and current clients. And I can’t even keep up with how many have registered. I think I’ve already registered over probably 50 myself. But I encourage anybody who’s listening to this, if it’s not too late, to register or to go. I know that they’re going to record the sessions. And so, if you’re listening to this podcast beyond October 11th, go on to the podcast a Sandler website, go on to mine and find that and you can watch the recordings of that summit. [11:55]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Well, I signed up for it. I’m going to be there. And you know, you kind of beat me to it. I also sat through that webinar with chat GPT. How is that? How does that play into sales? Your point of view.
Brian Jackson: Oh God, well, you know, so much of selling is, or at least so much of communication nowadays is over email. And, you know, as a sales coach, I’m constantly having to pull my clients to say, hey, stop trying to sell over email. You got to get ear to ear, you got to get face to face, but we can’t avoid it. You’re going to have to use email a lot. And so, what ChatGPT can help with, and this is kind of coming full circle. Nancy, but it can help you adapt your emails to different DISC styles. You can take an email and say, hey, help me write this email to somebody who has a high D DISC personality. That’s what AI can do for us. And it’s not just ChatGPT. There are other platforms out there. I believe one is Humantic, I think that the name Crystal Nose is another one. Others can help you with steering your messaging to specific personality styles or just sharpening your messaging altogether. I mean, that’s what ChatGPT can help you with. [13:16]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, you know, it’s funny, I’ve used Crystal Nose and I think it’s Humantic. And it’s a really valuable add-on to LinkedIn. So, before I meet first-time appointments, I go to their LinkedIn profile and then I have a synopsis of who I’m communicating with. Are they a D? And you know, in many cases, Brian, many of the people that I speak with, they’re business owners. They are Ds or Cs, I find.
Brian Jackson: Yeah. And if you think about how hard it in your prospecting efforts is to get somebody on the phone or somebody face to face, boy, you better put some effort into preparing for that conversation because nowadays with all this technology that we have, that technology makes people accessible. It also makes it easier for people to hide. So, you know, take advantage of the technology that’s out there to prepare for your conversations. And you know, you only get so many chances to email people as well before they ghost you, block you, unsubscribe, or whatever. So, I mean, that’s why it’s critical to use these platforms. Make sure your messaging is sharp. [14:37]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah. Recently in our Sandler class, we were encouraged to reach out to people that we hadn’t spoken with in a couple of months. I have HubSpot. I think you guys promote HubSpot too, right? Yeah. So, I did a reconnect email, very simple. And I emailed it to, I don’t know, a thousand contacts that I hadn’t spoken with for 90 days. And within two days, I got responses, and I booked in my first week, 30 appointments, 30. I always felt like it was too much. When I look at my calendar now, my calendar is blowing up, but I was shocked at the number of responses I got, number one, and a couple of them are leading to second and third appointments. Other ones are, you know: “Hi, how are you?”. But the value to that is, you know, you’re top of mind again. And I’ve been getting some referrals from these people. So, I encourage anybody out there to do something like that. It works. [15:59]
Brian Jackson: Well, send me a template, send me that template you used. I want to see what the template bullet looks like.
Nancy Calabrese: I will do that, I promise. What’s a fun fact about you?
Brian Jackson: Oh gosh. Well, a fun fact. Well, I see I have four kids, you know, 16, 14, 11, and five little five-year-old girls and three boys. So, I don’t know if that’s a fun fact, but that seems to be kind of the center of my life. My life is centered around my kids. That’s my passion. [16:32]
Nancy Calabrese: Yeah, well, I would say your life isn’t boring, that’s for sure.
Brian Jackson: No, it’s not. It’s not at all. They keep me very busy, yeah.
Nancy Calabrese: Hahaha. Yeah, so tell me something true in sales that almost nobody agrees with you on.
Brian Jackson: That’s such a wow, God. Something true in sales that almost nobody agrees with me on. You know, one of the things that I get a lot of pushbacks from for people that are brand new to Sandler is the component of the upfront contract where I coach people that upfront, one of the fastest ways to gain trust and instant credibility is to tell someone something that’s not in your own best interest. Before we start this conversation, let’s just take a very, very generic example going to give them sticker shock that it is a high price every single time people say wow well tell them upfront before we get into this I just want you to know people often have sticker shock when they find out how much this is here’s a range of how much it is and I still this from john ross so one of our most uh… sort of famous center coaches but he would say, should we stop the conversation now? And I love that. I love that we and Sandler do all that upfront. Get it all out front, the agenda, the expectations, what the outcomes are going to be, what we call our fears. So, should we stop the conversation? And you know what? Most of the time they’re going to say, no, why? Because they’re curious. Why would anybody want that, right? And we know that ultimately people are there to do that because they want information they’re going to stay in the conversation until they get that information which means that we keep that leverage that information take to our chest until they’re properly qualified and then by the time we get to the budget we tell us because hey there’s not that sticker shock anymore because we told them up front it takes courage to do that though and a lot of salespeople question Does it work because they’re afraid of losing the business and that’s where we have to teach them, hey, you got nothing to lose. You can’t lose something you don’t have. Do it. And so that’s the thing that I think a lot of people, they don’t believe it first, but then once they do it, they say, wow, that does work a lot better. [19:18]
Nancy Calabrese: I agree. Yep, I am totally in agreement with you. And I can’t believe we’re out of time. What is the one takeaway you’d like to leave the audience with?
Brian Jackson: You know, one takeaway is that you know, as a sale, if you’re a salesperson, you do not need to feel so much pressure to be the one to magically convince, persuade, manipulate others. The Sandler way teaches you to let go and just simply sort through prospects as to whether they have the problems you solve and whether they’re committed to fixing them. It takes the pressure off you; it takes the pressure off of them. So, if you want to be more successful in a career of selling, come and check out Sandler and see what we do. It’ll take your career to another level. [20:05]
Nancy Calabrese: Right. Love it. How can my audience reach you?
Brian Jackson: Let’s see, LinkedIn is probably the best. That’s Brian Jackson. I’m located in San Diego. You can also go to, my Sandler URL is salesrevenue.sandler.com, I believe.
Nancy Calabrese: Awesome. Everyone, if you haven’t taken advantage of what Sandler has to offer you, get in touch with Brian. It’s a life changer. I personally can’t get enough of it. And it’s impacted me both professionally and personally. And Brian, a huge thank you for being on the show, and maybe you’ll come back sometime.
Brian Jackson: I’ve enjoyed getting to know you today, Nancy, and anytime.
Nancy Calabrese: Love it. Make it a sales day that you’ll never forget everyone. Have a great one. [21:04]
