Sandler Training SLC- Caywood Consulting

09/03/2026

Calculate your real hourly rate.

This is one of the most clarifying exercises I put in front of a salesperson and it's very simple.

This is NOT the number on your offer letter.

This is the actual take-home on the work you are chasing, divided by the hours it will truly take.

I sat with a lender who ran the math on a loan he had been pouring time into. A hundred and twenty-eight thousand dollar deal.

Once he accounted for the hours, the follow-ups, and the split, his take-home worked out to about... seventy-two dollars.

Seventy-two dollars, for work that was eating days he could have spent on far bigger, better-fit opportunities.

Here is what happened when he saw the number:

He stopped agonizing over whether to walk away.

The decision made itself.

This is not about ego or thinking any client is beneath you.
It is about honesty.

Every hour you spend on discount work is an hour stolen from the premium work only you can do.

Know your rate. It changes what you say yes to.

09/02/2026

There are two different motions, and most teams blur them into one.

Prospecting is the short game. High intensity, pain focused, aimed at earning a single meeting with someone who has a problem right now.

Pursuit is the long game. It is what you do with the ninety-five percent of your market who are not buying today. You stay useful. You share things worth their time. You are patient.

The mistake is treating everyone like they are ready this quarter. Most are not. The companies that show up with value long before there is a deal are the ones already trusted when the pain finally arrives.

Prospect for today. Pursue for the year.

09/01/2026

The way people buy has quietly flipped.

By the time a buyer talks to a salesperson, they have already done most of their homework. Some research puts it north of eighty percent.

And the vast majority of deals go to someone who was already on the shortlist before that conversation ever happened.

The game is won earlier than most teams think. Not in the pitch. In whether you were already trusted and top of mind when the need finally surfaced.

08/31/2026

When a prospect flinches at the investment, most reps rush to soften the moment.

That instinct is costing you the truth.

A budget reaction is not a wall. It is a door into the real conversation about what solving this is actually worth to them.

Do not paper over it. Get curious about it.

Their willingness to invest tells you whether this is a real opportunity or a nice chat.

When money comes up, does your team explore it or escape it?

08/28/2026

Before you show up, sit with these four:

1. How much of your pipeline is real, and how do you know?
2. What is the oldest opportunity you are still counting, and why is it still on the board?
3. Do you have a genuine mix of early, mid, and late stage deals, or one fat stage propping up the number?
4. Which deals would your team quietly admit are not going to happen?

An hour like this is only worth the hour if you bring something honest to it. Show up with your own answers and you leave with a plan instead of notes.

Come to the webinar with your answers.

Tuesday, September 1. Sandler's Sales Pipeline Reality Check with John Rosso. 2pm ET / 11am PT.

Registration includes the pipeline checklist.

Register: https://hubs.li/Q04tZ7tb0

08/27/2026

There is still time to improve your year-end results.

I want to be careful with that sentence, because it can read like a motivational poster.
It is not. It is arithmetic.

You have roughly four months.

That is long enough to fix a qualification problem.
Long enough to rebuild a thin top of funnel.
Long enough for both to show up in revenue before the year closes.
What it is not long enough for is another quarter of hoping the maybes turn into yeses.

Most teams do not need a new strategy in September.

They need an honest look at what is actually in the pipeline, and the willingness to act on what they find.

John Rosso covers that inspection on September 1.

Registration includes the Sales Pipeline Reality Check checklist, so you can run it on your own funnel the same day.

Register: https://hubs.li/Q04tZ9Q-0

08/26/2026

Strong year-end results start long before Q4.

By the time October shows up, the deals closing in December are already in motion. You are not building then. You are harvesting what you planted in August and September.

Which makes right now the most valuable and most overlooked stretch of the year.

The teams that finish strong are rarely the ones who sprinted in the fourth quarter.
They are the ones who did the unglamorous work in the third, while everyone else waited for things to pick back up after summer.

What are you planting this month that December will thank you for?

Sandler's Sales Pipeline Reality Check with John Rosso. Tuesday, September 1, 2pm ET / 11am PT.

Register: https://hubs.li/Q04tYNCR0

08/25/2026

You cannot close a deal that is not in your pipeline. Obviously. And yet this is still the most ignored sentence in this profession.

Here is how it actually plays out:
A team gets busy.
Prospecting is the first thing to fall off, because it is the only activity with nobody waiting on the other end.
Six weeks later the calendar is full, the pipeline is empty, and no one can point to the day it happened.
The activity that feels least urgent today is the one that decides your December.

None of this is good or bad, right or wrong.
It is just where things currently are.
The only question is whether you are willing to look.

John Rosso walks through that inspection in Sandler's Sales Pipeline Reality Check, Tuesday September 1 at 2pm ET.

Register: https://hubs.li/Q04tZ78y0

Build a strong sales pipeline to ensure year-end success. Learn to identify gaps and improve qualification for predictable revenue with expert guidance. Register now.

08/24/2026

Most revenue problems are not revenue problems.

They are pipeline problems that showed up three months late.

When the pipeline is thin, every remaining deal starts carrying weight it was never built to carry.
The team leans harder on fewer opportunities.
Discounts creep in.
The forecast quietly turns into hope.

Predictable revenue is not a personality trait of great teams.
It is the output of a pipeline someone built on purpose.

John Rosso is running a Sandler session on exactly this on Tuesday, September 1. It is about inspecting your pipeline honestly instead of optimistically, which is harder than it sounds.

Registration also includes the Sales Pipeline Reality Check checklist.
https://hubs.li/Q04tYSSv0

08/21/2026

This has been a summer of new chapters in our family.

Our son pursuing growth in his 3rd football season.
Our oldest daughter heading into college, then off to South Korea in the spring.
Our youngest stepping into seventh grade.
My brother and his family moving across the world.

For years my job was to keep everyone close. Now a lot of it is learning to cheer from a distance.

Growth is rarely comfortable. It is almost always worth it.

Grateful for the people I get to watch step into who they are becoming.