David Mattson
Successful Sales Recruiting
trictly Marketing Magazine sat down with Dave Mattson, President and CEO of Sandler Training, to
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talk about Sales Management and Recruiting. Dave oversees the corporate direction and strategy for
Sandler’s global operations including sales, marketing, consulting, alliances and support, with a focus on
sales leadership, strategy and client satisfaction. Dave shared some great tips and suggestions about sales
recruiting.
SMM: Our Readers would like to know a little more about you and how you got started in your business.
DM: I was a client of Sandler in 1986. At that time, I thought that salespeople were born, not made, so I
was a little skeptical. Once I learned more about Sandler, though, I realized that they had a very
conversational model and they weren’t trying to make me somebody that I wasn’t. It seemed to me that
selling was like a sport and that the more you learned, the more you practiced, the better you could become.
I began working for a local Sandler training office in Connecticut and that’s where I was first exposed to
David Sandler, the “guru” of Sandler, who would become my mentor. My first role was to train the trainers
but under David Sandler’s tutelage, I went on to run global sales and eventually became COO of the
company in 1994. When David passed away, I purchased 25% of the company; and then bought another
25% of it in 2007 and finally bought the company outright in 2012. Now I’m the CEO and we have expanded
the company to 265 training centers in 31 different countries. We have about 19,000 students a year coming
through our program.
SMM: In every industry, there seems to be a lot of turnover in the sales department. Why do you think
that is?
DM: If I look at it from the first-hand perspective
of a salesperson, sales is a very difficult business.
Much of the time, we’re out there making calls, but
being rejected. Many individuals don’t have the
self-discipline necessary to do what it takes every
day. If you were to ask most people, salespeople
especially, “What do you have to do every single
day to be successful?” they can’t really tell you.
They tend to be reactive rather than follow a plan,
so when things don’t work out, they don’t really
know how to fix the issue. I also think that most
salespeople don’t have a process in place, so they
don’t know how to get from point A to point B.
Strictly Marketing Magazine July/August 2016
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