Baseline Selling

Dave Kurlan
Authorhouse (2005)
ISBN 1420895672
Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (1/06)

Read the review on ReaderViews.com

Baseball can teach us an awful lot about selling. It s as if Abner Doubleday had sales in mind when he first created the game of baseball. First, it s the only major sport in which only forward progress is allowed. All other major sports football, basketball, hockey and soccer involve a pitched battle that moves back and forth on a field or rink. (OK, there s golf, another forward-only sport. However any sales system comprised of 18 sequential steps is probably doomed to failure from the outset.)

Second, look at the jargon of baseball and how much of it has found its way into the world of sales. Successful salespeople are heavy hitters, and if you ve failed to get an appointment with a prospect, you ve struck out. If you think about it, you re already using baseball as a metaphor for selling.

Third, the baseball diamond is instantly recognizable, and the sales process can be likened to running the bases. Using the baseball diamond to illustrate the steps of sales and selling makes the sales process simple, memorable, understandable, and executable.

Fourth, the baseball diamond can be used to visually depict the sales pipeline, making it a more powerful tool than the traditional spreadsheet that lists opportunities-by-line-item. If you place all of your suspects on the first baseline, your prospects on the second baseline, your qualified opportunities between second and third base and your closeable opportunities on the third baseline, you d be able to instantly see the state, stage and value of your entire pipeline.

Let s discuss what it would take for you to turn a suspect into a prospect.

They must truly need what you sell;

They must have a compelling reason (urgency) to buy from you;

You must establish your SOB (Speed on the Bases) Quality; Salespeople have prospects with both need and urgency who still bought from somebody else. That s because they didn t have the sales equivalent of what in baseball is called speed on the bases . The best base stealers of all time had more in common than the ability to fun fast. They were all experts at distracting the pitcher, causing them to focus more of their attention on the base runner than the batter at the plate. In doing so, the batter would often get a pitch that would be real easy to hit hard, usually igniting a rally. .

In selling, SOB Quality is established when you successfully get the prospect to pay more attention to you than your competitors. You ve established your SOB Quality when you ve developed a strong relationship; demonstrated your expertise by asking good, tough timely questions; differentiated yourself from your competition through your humility and problem solving ability; and proven that you understand their business, problems and frustrations through your effective listening skills.

There are dozens of additional ways in which baseball can be incorporated into selling. Some of the many ways include the use of The Suicide Squeeze, The Hidden Ball Trick , Leveling the Playing Field , The Hanger , Plate Discipline , The Home Run , The Grand Slam , The Cycle and much, much more.