2nd Annual FOCIS® Contest

April 18, 2025
Phil Krone

We want to recognize those of you who used your FOCIS® Training and produced noteworthy results during this past year. We invite you to submit an entrée into the 2007 FOCIS® contest for a sales opportunity you experienced in the year ending 12-31-07.

There will be cash awards as well as public recognition for the winners. Productive Strategies plans to use the winners’ success stories to help further educate past and current students on the proper uses of discovery and presentation.

1st place: $500

2nd place: $300

3rd place: $200

Your result might be a big sale, or it could be an important persuasion that took place between you and co-workers, or even you and people outside of business (family, friends, and volunteer co-workers)

We seek the best examples of those who used their discovery and presentation skills to learn information that helped them reach their objectives. We suspect the winner will be the person who brought in a major sale; but we are also looking for more subtle examples of communication success. Here is an example: The chairman of a consulting firm used FOCIS® to ask an additional question of a client who had just placed business with his firm. The question led to a $200,000 add-on to the recently signed contact. This occurred between FOCIS® sessions 2 and 3 of our client’s training.

To be eligible you must have taken a workshop from Productive Strategies. Send us a Word document that describes your use of FOCIS® answering the questions we have below; or mail/fax the information. Let us know the issues you uncovered and the implications that you were able to build up with the prospect. We are also interested in the outcome, and the size of the sale.

We encourage you to fill it out even if you don’t think you have a chance to be recognized. Filling it out will reinforce what you have been taught and perhaps help you realize you need to further sharpen your discovery and presentation skills in 2008.

Good luck,

Phil Krone          Kristin Brown             Scott Pemberton                Alan Mitchell

FOCIS® Contest Entry Form: (take as much room as you need for each)

Your name: ________________________________________________

Company: ________________________________________________

Issues you discovered: (Objectives or Challenges)

Implications you were able to build up

How FOCIS® made a difference (compared to your old process of either discovery or presentation)

The end result of your success: (What was the Outcome?)

The Shot! And the Importance of Discovery

By Phil Krone, President • April 28, 2025
Asking the questions that give you the confidence you need to win in sales. 

How do they do it?

By Phil Krone, President • March 22, 2025
This faith-based not-for-profit achieves 40 percent year-over-year growth for 17 years by applying well-known business principles, one in particular. Why can so few businesses even dream of such growth?

B2B Selling vs. B2G Selling: What’s the difference?

By Phil Krone, President • February 17, 2025
Are you selling business to business or business to government or both? There are similarities but also differences that need to be recognized to optimize your results.

Small Assignment, Big Impact

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. 

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Five: Vision Sets the Course

By Phillip Krone • December 18, 2024
To date we have covered the Sales, Information, Tactical, and Marketing Plan Levels. Although the fifth level is the last to be discussed, it is often what sets a business in motion when it is founded. Today we will illustrate marketing to support a vision by discussing two very successful businesses.

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Four: Planning the Work, Working the Plan

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.

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Three: Tactical Sales Campaigns in the Field

By By Phil Krone, President • October 16, 2024
Using intelligence from prior levels leads to revenue-building sales campaigns on the ground in real time.

The Five Levels of Marketing - Level Two: Putting Data and Information to Work

By Phil Krone, President • September 16, 2024
Tracking key types of data each month provides insights that can build a highly productive marketing plan.

The Five Levels of Marketing

By Phil Krone, President • August 14, 2024
The Five Levels - Sales: Prospecting, qualifying, discovery, presentation, demonstration, proposal writing and closing; Information/Data/Analytics; Tactical or Campaign; Marketing or Program; Vision/Strategic

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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