CEO Sales Training

April 18, 2025
Phil Krone

The CEO has the ultimate responsibilty for sales in his or her organization and must keep those skills sharp. To better understand the culture of selling, and what makes some sales people successful the CEO must possess those critical sales skills themselves.

Overview: Seeking new ways to learn what your prospects and customers really need? Interested in finding a very precise explanation for the complicated process of persuading prospects to select your firm over competition? Looking for ways to shorten the sales cycle, reduce the time for new sales people to become cost effective, and improve customer/client satisfaction? Need to learn consultative selling skills?

This twelve hour seminar/workshop (three half days) will present the theory behind a specific skill for developing new business for companies with sophisticated products and services.

If desired, additional sessions can be scheduled to help participants further apply the theory to their business, or receive in-field coaching. The overall objective is to help you understand the theory of marketing discovery and to teach you the consultative selling skills necessary to use this theory. Mastery of this skill set will help build sales at your company. Participants receive a 70 page workbook.

Highlights:

  • Learn why 20-30% of sales people produce 70-80% of new sales.
  • Discover why traditional sales training is not effective in your marketplace; and how to respond when prospects attempt to commoditize your offering.
  • Understand why your prospects and customers only hear a portion of what you say.
  • Learn why sales from new products and service offerings often lag behind traditional products that are not as effective in meeting customer needs.
  • Discover why clients sometimes value your work less than they should; how to resist being commodities, and how to obtain higher prices.

Who should attend:  CEO’s who want to play a larger role in helping their organizations reach aggresive revenue objectives.

Presenter:  Philip Krone has been an active marketing professional since 1972. He is president of Productive Strategies, Inc., a management and marketing consulting firm that helps companies define and reach their growth objectives. Krone graduated from Duke University with a BA in Psychology and holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. Krone has spoken before many groups and published several articles regarding The Five Levels of Marketing, Managing Sales Reps, and FOCIS® Selling. FOCIS® Selling is a registered trademark of Productive Strategies, Inc.

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By By Phil Krone, President • January 17, 2025
Last year after a talk I gave at the Small Business Expo on Business to Business Selling (B2B) , a woman asked for my card because she wanted to meet to tell me about her business and learn more about mine. When we eventually got together she shared that her start-up company’s goal was to console consumers who had suffered the loss of a loved one directly, as she had. But my talk had inspired a new idea: assist funeral homes to improve their services by showing more empathy to their customers who were struggling as she was. I sensed that my talk gave her confidence that, despite the challenges, her business could succeed. What I didn’t realize was that this small assignment for a start-up would eventually have such a big impact on her business as well as an industry. 

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By Phillip Krone • December 18, 2024
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By By Phil Krone, President • December 5, 2024
As a reminder, the Five Levels of Marketing are (1) Sales, (2) Information/Data/Analytics, (3) Tactical or Campaign, (4) Marketing or Program, and (5) Vision/Strategic. We’ve explored each of the first three levels in separate columns in August, September, and October. They are available on our website's Productive Insights collection.

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The Five Levels of Marketing

By Phil Krone, President • August 14, 2024
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The Question That Leads to a Positive Decision (The Texas Hospital Story)

By Phil Krone, President • July 18, 2024
If you believe you have ADHD, you can be more successful by scheduling fewer first meetings and spending that time on more second and third meetings with qualified prospects. For our client, that meant cancelling half the medical CFO conventions his sales rep was planning to attend and investing more time following up with the CFO prospects he had already met. When your discovery is not productive, step back and restart at the point the discussion began to be about whose system is better. That’s an argument you are not going to win. Don’t waste years in prospect meetings in which you ask the same questions every time and get the same answers. Either decide that your product or service isn’t right for this prospect and move on—or broaden your discovery to find a need behind the need. In this hospital case, the hidden need was a fear that because no outside vendors had audited their system they might be in violation of regulations that an outsider would spot right away.
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