Practical Wisdom from Kahle Way Sales Systems

What happens when you spend a great deal of time and effort creating a big proposal for a prospect, and discover that they gave it to their current vendor to match?  Have you been betrayed, or is there some other explanation?  In any case, what do you do? Check out the XI Community:  https://x-icommunity.com/groupb2bsalespros/

Selling is at the same time both simple and incredibly challenging. It is simple in that almost every adult of reasonable intelligence, who has just a modicum of people skills, can understand it and do it.  It is incredibly challenging in that to become exceptionally good at it takes the better part of a life-time of effort and practice.  In this podcast, I show you how to make it simple.

I call it the 'gap between idea and action,' and it is one of the largest chasms in the road hindering our path to personal and organizational improvement. The gap between idea  and action describes the ubiquitous phenomenon that we, all of us, have ideas and intentions, and yet turning those into actions – habits and routines that enhance our skills and smooth out our lives, only happens a bit of...

Sooner or later, almost every professional B2B sales person comes to grips with the challenges of penetrating key accounts.  Key accounts are different than the ordinary, and require some more sophisticated skills and strategies.  Yet, they hold the secret to multiplying your income.  In this podcast, I share four fundamentals for effectively penetrating key accounts. https://x-icommunity.com/

Our actions follow our attitudes.   The relationship between actions and attitudes is so close, that the two go hand-in-hand, and our actions can be seen as outward expressions of our attitudes. While it is easy to connect the two in this example, the principle that it unveils – that our attitudes influence our actions – extends to every aspect of our lives, and particularly to our jobs, in even t...

It's a common mindset.  The field salesperson wants every communication with the customer to go through him/her.  However, that idea costs both the company and the sale person dearly and frustrates the customers.  It is an insidious hindrance to sales performance.

Occasionally, at a seminar or training program, I'll overhear one sales person mention this to another -- "I have my own style of selling."           From my perspective, that idea is more detrimental to that sales person's success than almost any other.  Not only that, but that idea holds down entire sales forces, renders sales management impotent, and dissipates the sales team's potential.  Of a...

Here are two questions about tricky customer issues that I respond to in this podcast:  If you dropped the ball with a customer, how can you redeem their trust again? How do you know how far to push a sale without overstepping your bounds and threatening the sale and/or the relationship with the customer? Consider the XI Community: https://x-icommunity.com/groupb2bsalespros/

Over my career as a salesperson, I sold a variety of products in a variety of selling situations.  From suits and sport coats in a retail men's store, to capital equipment to schools, to surgical staplers to surgeons in the operating room, to 70,000 line items for a wholesale distributor.  I always did well, and was the number one sales person in the nation for two different companies and two dist...

In my twenty plus years of educating salespeople, I have encountered tens of thousands of sales people, and worked with literally hundreds of sales organizations. The vast majority of them want to do better.  Yet, the vast majority of them remain at a level best described as "ordinary."  They never make the transition to being a true master of their craft. In spite of their desire to excel, few do...

Does your dress matter in professional sales?  What are the rules of manners that you should be aware of?  These are two questions I was asked, and I respond to them both in this podcast.  

There is not a salesperson in existence who hasn't repeatedly heard of the need to "close the sale."    That advice is incredibly overdone.  There is no one aspect of sales (at least in the B2B world) that undeservedly receives more disproportionate time and talk than the subject of "closing the sale." In my experience, closing has never been the result of verbal gymnastics on my part.  It's not m...

Goal setting is one of the universal best practices for salespeople.  Yet, many salespeople don't make it a part of their routines.  The first step toward rectifying that is to understand why goals are such an important part of a successful salesperson' life.  Join us to see how goal setting can focus and energize your efforts.

In most organizations, sales managers are the essential bridge between the company's sales goals and the realization of those goals.               It's an incredibly important and difficult job.  Unfortunately, it is often the most under-trained job in the entire organization.           As a long-time consultant and educator of salespeople and sales managers, I frequently see these three most comm...

In this rapidly changing economy, everyone is looking for a simple fix to dealing with the uncertainty of our economic environment. It seems like few are happy with their situations.  And all but a few point their fingers at the changing economy and vibrant competitive environment as the source of their dismay. Unfortunately, as long as our gaze is directed at "them" – those conditions in the mark...

Remember President George H. Bush's program to identify and recognize individual Americans who were outstanding in their fields, or who completed acts of bravery or selflessness, and in so doing, brightened the lives of those around them?  It was called a thousand points of light.  The idea was that one person's act, doesn't, by itself, do much.  However, when joined together with a thousand other...

If we chose to, we learn more from our failures than we do from our successes.  Within every failure there is the seed of a lesson well learned, of a solid character trait emerging. It is our failures that contribute most intensely to our development. Let's unpack this.

Q.  How do I ensure that I get the last look in a competitive bid situation? Q.  Occasionally, customers may say they have seen or received a lower price for the same product in order to receive better pricing from us. How would you handle that type of call? In this session, we're going to answer these two questions, providing you with guidelines you can implement for the balance of your career .

One of the watershed moments in the life and growth of a business occurs when the executives design and implement a system of measurements. This signals the development of the business from an entrepreneurial effort to a serious organization that can exist outside of the hands-on involvement of the entrepreneur.  In this piece, we unpack that idea and show you how to create and implement a system...

"Why should someone spend time with you?"  That was the question I asked the six sales people who were the subjects of an intense week-long training session.            The response?  Blank stares. Some uncomfortable fidgeting.  Nothing anywhere close to a coherent, persuasive response.  That experience made me realize the need for what I call a "value-added proposition," and what many people refe...

What sets the exceptional professional apart from the average?  Regardless of what the profession, from sales to psychiatry, the exceptional professionals share certain characteristics.  Here's one: The propensity to take risks.  Join with me as we unpack this character trait.  

For a professional or salesperson, your job is much more than just a job – it's a profession.  But what does it mean to be more professional? More importantly, what can we do to make sure that we, and our associates, are becoming ever more professional?  

We've all heard the numbers: Consumer confidence is down, retail sales are down.  And for many of us, the markets we serve are down, as well.  There is an important relationship to note here.  Confidence – an attitude – is down, so sales are down.  When confidence is up, sales follow.  The principle at work here is this: Our actions follow our attitudes.   The relationship between actions and atti...

We are all familiar with the Pareto principle, which, when applied to the world of sales, says that 80% of the business comes from 20% of the customers.    As a general rule, that 80/20 rule is accurate in lots of different situations.  Whenever there is a large group producing something, 20% of the people produce 80% of the results.           The "Five Percent Principle" states that five percent...

Have recent events left you unemployed?  I can empathize.  I have been there.  In my life, I've had three major periods of unemployment. I understand the uncertainty, anxiety and self-doubt that comes with that.  You just don't feel like life is as worthwhile unless you have a solid, fulfilling job.      Because of my experience, I have made it a point to be available to friends and colleagues who...