Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
Seth Godin posted this article last week. Read it it's very short and a very good story.
He finished with, "Too often, we close the sale before we even open it. Interact first, sell second"
When I help companies with their sales process it always leads to:
- shorter sales cycles as a result of the process itself
- higher average sales as a result of the value added to the process
- higher margins due to selling at their price instead of selling on price
- selling last instead of selling first.
It's the last point I want to talk about. I use the Baseline Selling process with clients because (I wrote the book) it's the simplest, easiest to implement and apply, most memorable and salespeople take to it the quickest. There hasn't been a company to date where, once the salespeople reach 1st base (face to face or 1st phone meeting) that they aren't skipping over to third base and immediately running home (presenting the value proposition, the company story, a solution, etc.) They skip all of the real estate between 1st and 3rd base where all the actual selling takes place!
You tell them Seth!
(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan
