2020: Sell More Than Ever!

April 18, 2025
Scott Pemberton

Beat your personal best in 2020  by developing your consultative selling skills, building a customized sales process, and getting hands-on help in closing deals. Sell like the top producers sell–the 20 percent who consistently bring in 80 percent of all new business.

Our highly popular and highly productive consultative sales course, FOCIS®, supports the individual and team growth so vital to boosting corporate sales in any industry and developing practice areas in professional services firms. It also works for non-profit board members looking to persuade donors to contribute.

The FOCIS® course  comprises four separate sessions over three months. Here are the four-session dates for each new section launch:

  • February 3 and 4, March 2, and April 13
  • March: 10 and 11, April 8, and May 13
  • April 6 and 7, May 11, and June 8
  • May 4 and 5, June 3, and July 13
  • June 9 and 10, July 17, and August 12

New sections  are scheduled to begin monthly throughout 2020. Open classes are conducted at the Productive Strategies offices in Northfield, Illinois, just north of the intersection of the Edens Expressway and Willow Road and west of the expressway.

Is FOCIS® right  for your business developers or your sales team?

To find out , contact Phil Krone (847-446-0008 /  pkrone@productivestrategies.com. Learn more about all of  our services designed to grow your top line through consultative sales training, lead generation, and marketing communications. Our Courses also include “Negotiation Skills for Today,” “Warming Up to Cold Calling,” and “Referrals: The Workshop.”

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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 By Phil Krone, President • December 5, 2024
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The Five Levels of Marketing

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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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