Sellers seeking to be more successful are putting more emphasis on proper sales call preparation.  Competition is fierce and prospect's available time is scarce, so seller's have to be prepared to make the most of this limited customer-facing time.... whether on the phone or in person.  Having an effective call preparation process can significantly improve results.  ShadeTree's Dynamic Conversation Playbooks suggests that the "Prepare" phase of a call consists of:

• Purpose
• Research
• Plan 

The better a salesperson understands his/her customer's business, the better able the salesperson is to help the customer improve their business.  Improving a customer's business rarely has "price" as the leading topic of interest.  Price never plays a factor in something that a buyer doesn't want or doesn't understand.

Yet, with the pressure to deliver quarterly revenue targets, many sales mangers and performers grab the price lever, believing that price is the fastest way to accelerate a sale to close.   Let's examine a simple approach to getting invited to the short list party... one that doesn't include pricing/discounting.