You ran a great call. The prospect agreed with everything. Then the deal sat for three weeks, and you found yourself wanting the sale far more than they did.

Deals stall when the buyer's pain is not strong enough in the present to make change a priority. Your job is to find out how committed they are to fixing the problem, not to prove how good you are. In this episode we start with a water heater breaker that flipped three days in a row and trace the exact moment a nuisance became a problem worth paying to fix.

**Why a prospect has no urgency to buy**

On Saturday the breaker was an inconvenience. On Sunday it hinted at something bigger. On Monday it flipped back the second it was reset, and suddenly it mattered. Buyers move through the same stages. Sandler looks at motivation in four parts: gain in the future, gain in the present, pain in the present, and pain in the future. Urgency to act shows up when pain is acute and pervasive, when the problem is not going away on its own.

**The two ways people avoid fixing a problem**

Most of us do nothing about it, or we talk to someone who cannot fix it and let them make us feel better about waiting. Your prospects do the same. If your selling system is built to showcase what you can do instead of asking what they need and whether now is the time, you will get very little urgency back.

**Measure commitment with a scale of 1 to 10**

Urgency is always followed by a plan to execute. We walk through the close Jim uses: lay out what you could do, then ask where they sit on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 means "that is the plan I want" and 1 means "we need to find something else." The number tells you whether you have a buyer or a conversation.

**Stop being a professional visitor**

When you skip that measurement, the call becomes a performance about your credibility, and the end of the meeting turns into an assessment of how you feel about yourself. You end up helping someone process their problem while they keep doing nothing about it.

**Negative reverse selling and the truth serum question**

Once you want it more than the buyer does, you become the pushy salesperson. Negative reverse selling gives the prospect a clear choice to do nothing: "It seems like this is not a problem, and a year from now you will be in the same spot, only better at dealing with it. Is that fair?" Most people are not content with that answer, and the ones who say yes just saved you months.

If this resonated, check out "Why You Keep Chasing Prospects Who Never Decide," where we cover what happens after a deal stalls.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development

You know you should call that past client. You have known it for three years. Every day you do not, the phone gets heavier.

We think the problem is rarely skill. When the reason behind a prospecting call is self-serving (find more money, get a referral, hit a number), your brain works against the action because it feels selfish. Change the motive and the follow-through changes with it. In this episode, Jim and I stay on mindset instead of technique, because if you are stuck getting on the bike, technique is not your problem.

**Why does prospecting feel so selfish?**

Jim opens with the first principle: your brain is unreliable. The story you tell yourself ("they will see through me, they know I just want their money") keeps you off the phone. Curiosity fixes it. People love talking about their favorite subject, which is themselves.

**The five foot rule**

David Sandler taught that anyone within five feet of you is a conversation. Not a close. A conversation.

**Some will, some won't, so what, someone's waiting**

We talk about the ego we carry into prospecting, and the "dance monkey dance" habit of showing off instead of asking what brought someone in.

**Calling past clients without feeling salesy**

Jim has never made a past client call where the person was not genuinely glad to hear from him, even after spending days building up the nerve. Make it a call to a friend, not a call to a client you want more business from. A third-party story gives you an easy reason to reach out.

**Friction and call reluctance**

Good habits need less friction; bad habits need more. Start with a small list and a warm first call, because in Sandler the hardest call to make is the first one. Schedule your calls early in the day so you are not carrying the dread until 4 p.m.

**Perfectionism as a torture chamber**

Drawing on David Burns, we look at how perfectionism built your client base and now keeps you from the relationship work you do best.

If this resonated, check out "What Avoiding the Uncomfortable Sales Calls Is Costing You," where we cover the cost side of the same avoidance.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development

Every few months the calendar hands you a fifth week, the one that falls outside your standing meetings, and most of it disappears into catch-up work before you notice it arrived. That extra week is the most strategic time you get all quarter. The salespeople who plan it in advance use it to get ahead of their pipeline instead of behind their inbox.

In this episode we break down the fifth week of the month: why it slips away, how to claim it, and how the same thinking sharpens the way you time outreach to a buyer. Underneath the calendar talk sits a bigger idea. Strategy is thinking like the other person, and that is the same muscle as empathy.

**Why the fifth week disappears**

Parkinson's Law says work expands to fill the time you give it. Your recurring meetings never claim the fifth week, so it fills with whatever shouts loudest, usually three months of email. Name it as strategic time before it arrives and it stops vanishing.

**Pre-plan the week before it lands**

Block the fifth week for the work that is important but not urgent: goal setting, and planning the next month or quarter. Deciding in advance is what separates a bonus week you waste from a week that moves your number.

**Read the buyer's calendar, not only your own**

Timing is a form of caring. Someone in accounting does not want your call during month-end close. A standing meeting on the first or the fifteenth competes with a billing team's busiest day. Track a prospect's birthday, then check that it did not land on a weekend, so your note arrives on the day and not a week late.

**Why you cannot find a buyer's pain by looking for it**

Pain is emotional, so an intellectual search for it comes up empty. You reach it by feeling the buyer's experience in the places where they hurt, and that builds a deeper connection faster than any clever question.

**Qualify the person, or perform for them**

On any call you can qualify the person in front of you, or you can demonstrate your competence by performing. Performing makes every conversation about how you feel about yourself, which is a hard place to sell from.

**One thing to try this month**

Find your next fifth week now and put one strategic block on the calendar before it fills. Note: it's next week!

If the pain thread lands, listen back to "Stop Pitching, Start Diagnosing," where we get into discovery and why buyers open up.

The Sandler Training Hour Hosted by Jim & Jason Stephens | Crossroads Business Development

Join hosts Jim and Jason Stephens from Crossroads Business Development as they discuss techniques, tactics, and the occasional tangent associated with the Sandler Selling System. Whether you are prospecting, negotiating, or closing, The Sandler Training Hour gives you the actionable advice you need to stop "winging it" and start controlling the sale.

📧 Reach out: jason.stephens@sandler.com 🌐 Crossroads Business Development