Adam Torres and Rob Jeremiassen discuss Sandler’s methodology.
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Show Notes:
Why has Sandler’s methodology worked so well for so many companies? In this episode, Adam Torres and Rob Jeremiassen, CEO of ScaleUP Advisors, Inc., explore ScaleUp Advisors and Sandler’s methodology.
About ScaleUP Advisors, Inc.
Sandler offers Sandler Training programs in sales, leadership, and customer service for business professionals. This includes training for business owners, CEOs & C-Suite executives who strive to become life-changing coaches and mentors. They also provide sales, management & leadership consulting services to our corporate & multinational clientele.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have Rob Jermiason on the line and he’s the CEO of ScaleUp Advisors.
Rob, welcome to the show. Adam, thanks very much for having me. All right. So I know you were referred over to the show from Patrick Lang. Big shout out to Patrick. I know he always brings us a great guests. And so awesome to have you on. no pressure there though. Right, Rob? Yeah, no, none whatsoever. I feel no awesome.
So today’s topic. So why training typically does not deliver the results desired. So we’ll get into that and more, but to get us kicked off here, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So, Rob, at Mission Matters, we’re all about amplifying stories for entrepreneurs, executives and experts, and really for people that we feel need to be heard.
That’s our mission. Rob, what mission matters to you? Well, our mission with Scaled Advisors and what we deliver, which is Sandler Training, which we’ll spend time talking about, is really helping companies as well as individuals grow and improve their performance by empowering them through really the, the content and the structure and the resources that sound that provides.
So there’s an enormous wealth of material and content structures. I said that helps people apply things that they may know a lot of or a little love, but gives them a path towards really. Much more success by applying the things that Sandler spent 55 years developing and working on. I think that’s, I think that’s a great is uh, Sandler’s methodologies.
Maybe tell us a little bit about that. Sure, sure. I think a couple of things are the way in which Sandler, I guess, works with clients being a little, there’s some things that are a little bit different about it, which is kind of what you alluded to the beginning, which is why Sandler has been so successful addressing things that commonly have no training, which, you know, maybe don’t work as well as designed as hoped or deliver the You know, the return that are hoped and expected for in many traditional type of training.
The, the focus of Sandler and the methodology of it is a couple of things. 1 is the, the process and piece of it, a well defined structure. A process that’s the what right that guides people effectively. And that’s the how in their sales or relationship process or in growing and developing their business.
Right? So that’s 1 thing. The other couple of important areas are around building better habits, right? So, training specifically on the techniques or the skill side of it, a lot of time on the behaviors and activities that are needed for success that correlate very directly with. The attitude and those three things together are a big piece of what helps deliver that success another component would be focusing on understanding first not selling right so learning about the prospect Undercovering uncovering the real problems through questioning That get to the root of things and find the impact of problems so that then your efforts around what you actually do provide what you do sell what you do offer are focused on the right things.
All right, and so that’s often glossed over and by many people. So that’s a big 1 and then really the training and the way in which we deliver it, focusing on. Enabling people to put things into practice quite easily a little bit of training. Over a longer period of time that helps develop and create permanent change, right?
So that delivers consistent lasting success. So that would be how I would maybe describe that answer. Why do you think Sandler’s methodology has worked so well for so many companies long? Obviously, this company is going to be a little bit different, you know, from company to company size, industry, et cetera, but like, why do you think it’s worked?
I do think by the way, we started about 2 years ago our scale of advisors doing this, and we, you know, my business partner, I had 25 years of experience in sales, sales management, sales leadership, general manager type roles and hadn’t ourselves actually used, hadn’t experienced SAMLR, and we’ve done tons and tons of training over those decades And I think what Sam has really done phenomenally well is it’s not that they have some unique secret that is totally unique to them and no one else knows.
It’s really applying a process methodology combined with a good understanding of. The human nature and how different people respond to different things and how and why they make decisions in the way they do And bringing those things together have a big big part of that I think and then again the delivery method And all of the things that it has built over those five plus decades in terms of the resources the tools the the lms or learning management system that comes along with the training You that has enabled people to really learn, apply, and have it stick, right?
So that at the end of a course, because our courses are, you know, typically a year or longer, right? So by the end of that, you really have worked out how this works, why it works, what to do, and it kind of becomes part of your DNA. And that is, that is what I found to be very, very different, right? And so, a good Example of a Sandler being if you relate it to a foreign language, let’s say you don’t know a single word of Mandarin or Japanese or pick any language.
You don’t know a word about right? So you can get that. Here’s here’s Sam. Okay. So The way it’s broken down is we have sort of a three month component. Well, I’ll talk about it in the sales side of things first. Right. So there’s a, you know, there’s three months of getting the basics and the foundation and the main pieces of it.
Right. And so by the end of that, you can speak a little bit, you can order off a menu. It’s the, you know, it’s sunny today. My name is, your name is, I can order off a menu sort of thing. Then you step into the next nine months, which we call the sort of that mastery portion. And a couple months into that.
You’re really starting to get it, you’re applying it easier, you’re seeing results coming in and you’re conversational now, right? You still have to, you still have to look at things, remember things, go back and check on stuff, whatever, but then by the end of that year, it’s just part of what you do. You know what to do, how to do it, why you do it, and it’s just part of your process, if you will, every day.
That’s like equivalent to let’s say fluency of a language. If that makes sense. Yeah, it definitely does. And I want to say you mentioned sales a couple of times and a big fan of sales and sales processes and kind of digging in there. Where do you find that sales engagement often goes wrong?
Where it often goes wrong, I think is typically a sales person, regardless of product or industry or, or serve, whatever it is they have, their goal in mind is found someone that, you know, looks and smells and acts like they might have a need and I have a goal of selling them what, what I have.
And so everyone has a, you know, you, you start a process of learning a little bit about them. And as soon as you. the first thing that comes down the pike of these are the problems I’m having or we’re not doing that people will grab on to it and go man I know how to do this and go straight into fix it mode And they’ll start telling them all of how their solution they’re offering their product or service Is wonderful.
It might be the greatest product in the history of the world, but the other side of the table or the other side of the phone call or zoom session doesn’t really care about that they want to because you haven’t really uncovered what matters to them. What’s really happening. What the problem is, you’ve you’ve want people launch into the sales mode.
As soon as they see an opportunity, that’s a big challenge. And I think the Sandler approach to it is the methodology, the process, that type of stuff is all around qualification of the prospect. In other words, the prospect has to qualify for your time for you to be of any value to them.
Right? And so with that. You’re really looking at uncovering the real problem, uncovering, do they have the money? Are they willing and able to spend the money they need for to fix said problem? And then how do they make a decision? And there’s that decision process and who’s involved, the what, where, when, how, and why.
Does it make sense? And do you want to take part in that? Right? So the answer is yes to those 3 things. Okay, great. You’ve uncovered everything. You’ve also probably had a lot of the objections if you’ve gone through that well, and then at the end of the process is the actual selling part, right? Which is addressing what you have that fixes the problems that we’ve already talked about.
Right. So I think that’s a, that’s 1 reason why doesn’t get as often, but wrong is because the focus is not on really the, prospect, the client more of how do I sell what I have to them? Yeah, it does. like, what kind of industries? Is is this for, you know, higher dollar products, like more, more consultative?
Is this more like, like, how, you applied this? Maybe give me an example or so on how you’ve seen this applied. So it’s like, it fit for? I guess this is one way to ask kind of what you’re asking. So Sandler Is fairly industry, if you will, agnostic. In other words, the things that we do apply to to very broad range of that the primary, I guess, market or like my ideal.
Prospect is it’s primarily B2B, not exclusively, but primarily B2B relationship oriented type of engagement and probably multi step process is best suited for this. So it’s not so much of a transactional nature. Type of sale. That’s why a lot of consumer might not make sense. Some does, but much maybe won’t and or if it’s kind of in a B2B, it’s a very transactional.
Maybe it’s a 1 call maximum 2 step process, less impactful. Right, but much more impactful when it is relationship oriented, multi step in a B2B environment. If that answers the question. So we talked about sales a bit. this hit other areas of training as well?
And if so, maybe elaborate a little. Absolutely. So there’s, think about it in four key buckets. We talked about sales. That’s kind of the, you know, certainly bread and butter for Sandler where it started. The other, other areas are would be around management and leadership and those areas are that, that area is primarily the I guess you could say the customer facing revenue generating.
Side of the business and so that’s the, the manager, the leader, the executive owner type of person, depending on the company and that sort of thing. I’m looking at their leadership skills where they’re at now, where they want to be in the gaps and when working on those, then it’s the people side of. Of that equation, right?
How do we attract, identify, select on board and grow our people to be the best they can to deliver the most for the business and then the management of let’s just say the business performance, right? How do we work with our people and coach them on the meetings and calls that they’re having, the deal progression and process and strategy and the, you of businesses, we go through whatever.
perceptions, porter, year, et cetera, in whatever those strategies are and how do we operationalize those? that’s one piece. Another one would be what we call organizational excellence, which would be more of your broad based, sort of, your HR, Ops, marketing, sales, service delivery, post sale, you know, type of piece And, And how, let’s say a company that might be 25Million dollars has aspirations to be 50 or 75 or whatever over some 3, 5 year period of time.
That’s a very. That’s the company at 25 versus 50 or 100 is a very different thing. So how do we plan and organize ourselves now as we develop and grow into that and all the pieces that come into that? So that’s another 1. and then the 4th kind of bucket to think about would be. Customer care type of stuff where it’s really run communication and how do we handle things objections and issues more like a non sales maker, but someone interacts with your client base, right?
Traditional. Customer care type of stuff, but it could relate to other things, maybe internally, because it’s very focused on communication skills, listening before responding. How do we address this understanding who we’re talking to? How do we best. Resolve the situation that kind of thing. you mentioned that, you know, a typical engagement can be, you know, a year.
Right? and I do like the analogy use of, like, equating it to like a language and that that right off the top just makes me feel like, well, of course, you’re going to, if you want to learn a language, if you want to really have. Lasting change that isn’t just, you know and I’m not against a one day intensive or things like that.
I mean, there’s different trainings for different things, right? But that being said, if you want to have some long term changes, it’s going to take some time because you’re like, just like learning another language. That being said, what is the delivery format like over the course of that year?
Because obviously sometimes people hear that they’re like, whoa, we don’t have time or we don’t have, you know, so what does that, what does that look like? So there’s a couple different ways to skin. You know, onion or peel the onion, I guess, or what have you, right? Which is the political talk about it, right?
Yeah, exactly. Right. Leave the animals out of it. Go ahead. Right. Exactly. So let’s talk about that sales piece and what you said. So, yeah, typical program is a year and what it is, and it’s weekly sessions and 52 hour program, Weeks out of the year is actually probably 46 or 7, you know, holidays and that kind of stuff.
Right? So, but just weekly sessions and how, we do it is mostly we would deliver this now, especially post COVID live virtual interactive on zoom. Okay, so they’re, they’re 90 minute sessions. So they’re. They’re robust in around a very specific piece of content. And there’s content delivery and training of it.
There’s breakouts that go and how does this apply to you? And how are you going to work it? Or maybe there’s role playing and practicing, or we give you a resource or a tool to how you’re going to do this thing in your daily. Work, et cetera, come back to the group, that kind of thing. And so there’s a very methodical way in which the delivery of an enormous amount of content is broken down in bite sized pieces.
So at the end of it. You, you, you have the full picture, you’re able to apply these things and just part of your course of your daily life, if you will. Right? So, if that isn’t the right fit for a company, there are other ways in which we can do it. for example 1st, 10 modules or, or close to 3 months that I talked about, we might do that in a 2 day session.
Right, or we kind of accelerate it. It’s two full days and and we’re doing it. Typically that works. Well, if then the group’s going to move into the next section, the next 9 months and go into that weekly bit. So it accelerates it that way. Sometimes the client might just do that. 1st, 3 months.
They’re gonna just use that for now. And that’s kind of gonna be the plan for, you know, for, for the moment, we’re just gonna do that. So that can be done in three months or we could do it in two days. Right? Yeah. And so there’s, there’s different ways to meet the client need, right? It’s up to them and, and, and us to work together on what is the right way to do this, to give you the best result with the resources you have or the money that you have, right?
Mm-Hmm. . So, that’s there’s a couple of couple of different ways in which that can be delivered. Yeah. Well, Rob, I just have to say, it’s been great having you on the show. I’ve enjoyed learning more about what you’re doing over at Scallop Advisors and also, of course, Handlers Methodology. That being said, if somebody wants to follow up and connect and learn more what’s the best way for them to do that?
You know, I will probably just say, I’ve been giving you my email address comes directly to me. That’s maybe the easiest thing. And that email address would be Rob. J E R E M I A S S E N at Sandler. com. S A N D L E R. com. Wonderful. And for the audience, of course, we’ll leave that in the show notes so that you can just you know, click on it and shoot Rob an email.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters or engaging in an episode, we’re all about bringing on mission based business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives, and having them You know what they do, why they do what they do, how they’re doing it, and what we can all learn from that.
So if that sounds interesting or fun or exciting to you, hit that subscribe button, because we have many more mission based individuals coming up on the line and we don’t want you to miss a thing, Rob, again, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thanks, Adam. Really enjoyed it.
