About Tony Parinello, Founder and CEO, Selling to VITO

In 1995, Tony Parinello started a revolution with his first best-selling Selling to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer book. He’s authored seven wildly successful sales books, personally trained over 2,000,000 salespeople and the majority of the Fortune 1000, and reaches salespeople around the world with his weekly internet broadcasts. Tony’s students learn to use his unique appointment-setting methods to present their ideas to CEOs, presidents, owners and other difficult-to-reach individuals who hold the ultimate veto power over all decisions made within their enterprises. Tony’s sales career started in 1978 and he is still very much in the game, making sales calls to VITOs on a regular basis. He didn’t always do that, though. Early in his career, he found a great deal of business at lower levels within organizations in his sales territory – in a place he now calls Linoleumville. This is the part of the organization where the folks that did the recommending had to fit their recommendations into a “budget.” After three consecutive years of above quota sales performance, he created a very unfortunate situation: he was at 19% of quota, and the year was half over. As a result, his manager put him on probation. After the initial panic, and after realizing the “blame game” wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he took stock and figured that if he was going to keep his job, he had to change the way he was selling. he booked a one-way ticket out of Linoleumville, started selling to VITO, and went from 19% to 103% of quota. The good news: he got to keep his job. The better news for salespeople around the world: he eventually left that company…and started the VITO selling revolution.


About Dave Mattson, CEO, Sandler Systems, Inc.

Dave Mattson is the CEO and a partner at Sandler Systems, Inc., an international training and consulting organization. Since 1986, he has been a trainer and business consultant in management, sales, inter-personal communication, corporate team building and strategic planning throughout the United States and Europe. His domestic and international clients include top-name organizations in many different industries.

An early lesson in goal orientation came when Dave was a child in Connecticut. When snow fell and school was cancelled, Dave shoveled driveways for pay – and would have contests with other shovelers to see who could clear out the most driveways by the end of the day. He noticed that the days when he had contests with other people were invariably days when he made the most money. The lesson: setting a goal (such as winning a contest) equates to higher sales production. This was the first of many lessons on the psychology of sales, a topic that has been a passion of Dave’s for many decades.

Dave’s consulting and training experience encompasses a wide range of sales and management topics designed to increase the productivity and efficiency of any company. Participants and clients often describe his creative enthusiasm, problem solving and curriculum design as particular strengths. He met Sandler Training (SM) founder David Sandler in 1986, fell in love with his material, went to work for Mr. Sandler in 1988, and was eventually chosen to lead the company. His mission is to “help people make their lives better by using the Sandler (SM) approach.”

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