The Online Business Center

Archive for January, 2009

I’ve always thought the saying “leaders are born, not made” rang hollow, as if spoken by someone who could recognize a great leader but had no idea how to train one. Dave Kurlan, author of Baseline Selling would likely agree, adding that the samemisconception applies to salespeople. Using baseball as an extended analogy, Kurlan’s book is a training manual for becoming a sales superstar.

Kurlan has been involved in sales training, management, and consulting for more than 30 years. During that time, he’s seen sales methodologies become increasingly diverse and complex. Feature-benefit selling, consultative selling, relationship selling, and others have “introduced good concepts and practices” but have also “unnecessarily complicated the process.” His solution, baseline selling, provides a simplified sales methodology that is both easy to remember and implement. Similar to baseball, the goal of baseline selling is systematic, forward movement from base to base—one stage of the sale to the next—until the deal is closed.

First base is getting an appointment with the prospect. Second base means the prospect wants what you are selling and there is some urgency to close the deal. At third base the sales person has shown that the two parties are qualified to do business together. Home base is presenting a winning solution and making the sale.

This step-by-step method is reflected in the book’s structure. At each stage of the sales process, Kurlan indicates the salesperson’s goals, identifies potential problems, and offers practical tools for success. Sales is largely a game of psychology and persistence, and some of Kurlan’s most perceptive and useful advice helps salespeople identify and overcome self-imposed obstacles to success, such as the need for approval, fear of rejection, call anxiety, and perfectionism.

He also offers a wide range of practical tips for making group presentations, speaking one-on-one to prospects, and solving buyer’s concerns. Not all of Kurlan’s advice is new; some is common sense, and some can be found in other books. Many other books, however, mix good advice with bad, are replete with artificial sales stories, and suffer from mind-numbing redundancy. Here Kurlan’s years of experience serve the reader well: He has cherry-picked the best ideas and most effective techniques, and then wrapped them up in a straight-forward methodology that sales people can easily recall when under fire.

Kurlan gamely pitches his book to all salespeople. Those who don’t care for baseball, or believe sports analogies are overused in business, may be inclined to look elsewhere. Although the baseball analogy wears thin in places—a salesperson who gets to first base because the prospect made first contact is said to have been “hit by the pitch”—novice and veteran salespeople alike will find much in Baseline Selling to improve their game.

Factors mentioned above were crucial to successfully transitioning from reliance on revenue from competitive foods (foods sold on school campuses outside of school meal programs) to reliance on meal revenue. But these changes were not easy to make. School districts partici-pating in the pilot studies identifi ed the following chal-lenges to implementing SB 19 food standards:

• Open campuses place the food service in direct com-petition with off-campus food and beverage vendors such as coffee shops, fast food restaurants and con-venience stores. Open campuses are most common at the high school level;
• Short meal periods make it hard to serve the student population and leave enough time to eat. Students then rely on more readily available vending and snack bar items.
• Insuffi cient number of food service staff and payment stations make it diffi cult to quickly and effi ciently serve the student population during the lunch period. The resulting long lines deter students from buying the school meal;
• Perishability and increased labor associated with the provision of freshly prepared foods challenge food service to break even given the limited government reimbursement funds that schools receive to subsidize free and reduced price meals.
• Beverage contracts with vending companies may offer fi nancial incentives to schools for selling and advertising the less healthy highly sweetened bever-ages on campus;
• Reliance on the sale of high-calorie, nutrient poor foods to support student programs and activities:These food and beverage sales are often the main source of funding for student clubs, sports teams and student groups. These sales from groups other than food service compete with food service and can decrease food service revenues.
• Inadequate personnel, technology and incentives for monitoring compliance with SB 19 nutrition standards make it diffi cult to ensure that all venues on campus continue to adhere to the nutrition standards.
• Insufficient funding for cafeteria improvements, education and training of staff, and purchasing of healthier food and beverage options. Study schools were able to make these types of changes because they were provided with additional funds as part of participating in the study.
• Schools that have relatively few students eligible for subsidized meals face unique challenges in reducing their reliance on a la carte sales. Not only is it more diffi cult to entice full price students to pay for the school meal, schools receive lower federal and no state reimbursement for meals paid for at full price. Furthermore raising meal prices can result in students seeking out cheaper and less healthful fare off- campus. Closed campus status may therefore be a particularly important issue for higher income schools.

• Improvements to the school meal program: A number of changes to the school meal program were made to enhance its appeal to students. These changes likely contributed to higher participation in the meal pro-gram which resulted in increased revenue.
• Updating the meal program menu: Most of the schools participating in these studies revamped their menus to promote the meal program. The most common changes were the addition of salad and/or fruit bars and a switch from standard cafeteria style ser-vice to a food court set up with international themes.
• Enhancing serving and eating areas: Almostall participating districts upgraded their cafe-terias by making simple improvements such as replacing long tables and benches with smaller round tables and chairs, painting the walls, adding murals and other decorations and redesigning menu boards in a manner that created an inviting ambience. Outdoor eating areas were also sometimes improved or expanded, and adequate shading provided when needed. In many cases measures were taken to decrease meal lines and increase the time available for eating. These measures included adding additional payment stations, offering “grab and go” packaged meals and serving meals from carts located throughout the campus.
• Improving kitchen facilities: In response to student demand for more “fresh” food and more “variety”, some of the participating schools remodeled their kitchen facilities to better accommodate the preparation of meals on-site and the storage of larger vol-umes of fresh produce.
• Direct involvement of students in changing the food environment Students at the participating schools were involved to varying degrees in policy development, implementa-tion, nutrition education and promotion. Schools that involved students in selecting and promoting healthy options tended to see greater sales of healthy items.
• Strong school site buy-in Many different stakeholders are affected by the SB 19 regulations. Resistance, especially from those that could be affected by reduced revenues, was not uncommon. This resistance was best overcome by open communication, collegial relationships, a willingness to compromise, and making step by step changes. Buy-in from district and school administra-tion (i.e. superintendents and principals) was essential and the role of the food service directors, supervisors and staff was central. The more successful districts obtained support from and maintained consistent communication with the key stakeholder groups.
• Marginalizing a la carte foods Schools that eliminated the foods sold competi-tively by food service tended to see greater revenue increases suggesting that reduced availability of other options was critical to increase participation in the meal program.