Alphabetical Basic Concepts of Selling

by Dale Brakhage

Learn to sell anything! Learn how to be more persuasive! This book breaks the complex behavior of "selling" into 26 easy-to-understand basic concepts, one for each letter of the alphabet. A quick and entertaining read, this book explains how selling works, why customers buy and how you can be more persuasive in anything you do. Professional salespeople use this book as a fun review of their selling skills. Politicians, lawyers, clergy, teachers and parents use it to learn how to better communicate their ideas to others. Now everyone can learn how to persuade other people to accept the value of an idea. That is what selling really is, and EVERYBODY SELLS! You can SPELL anything with the 26 letters of the alphabet; you can SELL anything with these 26 Alphabetical Basic Concepts of Selling. These are the basic concepts of selling that the best professional salespeople use to make huge sales. Why not apply them to your everyday communication skills to become a very persuasive person?

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 2007

About the author

Dale Brakhage grew up in Louisiana. He was an Eagle Scout and an internationally competitive target shooter. He earned a summa cum laude degree in Educational Psychology in 1978. Entering the U.S. Army, Dale rapidly advanced to the rank of Captain, becoming a nuclear and chemical weapons expert. He wrote a national plan to control nuclear and chemical weapons accidents that the Department of Defense adopted in 1982.
Dale became a pharmaceutical sales man in 1983, and sold prescription drugs for pharma giants like Bristol Meyers, Johnson & Johnson and Glaxo. Then Dale joined a tiny drug company, Russ Pharmaceuticals, in Birmingham. He managed marketing for the pain reliever, LORTAB, as it went national and became one of America’s top-100 prescribed drugs. Later, as a Russ Sales Manager in Cleveland, Ohio, Dale hired and trained new salespeople that expanded LORTAB sales in the Mid-West.
In 1991, Dale and seven others founded their own pharmaceutical company, Scandipharm, to focus on the disease cystic fibrosis. In the first year, Dale single-handedly sold over a million dollars of new medical products while simultaneously performing the company’s national marketing duties. During the following 7 years, as the Director of Marketing, then Director of National Account Sales and Director of Managed Healthcare Sales, Dale helped grow annual sales from zero to 65 million dollars. After Scandipharm sold in 1999, Dale became the Vice-President of Business Development for Channel Link, an internet e-commerce pharmaceutical inventory management software firm. When that company sold, Dale enjoyed a year off.
After 9-11, Dale sought a local, non-travel job. It bothered him a lot, as an American citizen, to be forced to partially undress to get on an airplane just because a few terrorists hate America! So, he began his second career, joining Alabama’s largest daily newspaper, The Birmingham News. He worked there as Medical Sales Rep, Sales Manager and recently became their Health Systems Marketing Manager.
Dale is currently President of the American Advertising Federation, Birmingham. He is also an author, sought after speaker, business-training consultant and Ford Mustang restorer.
Dale has 30 years of success in sales, marketing, writing, advertising, management, training and consulting. Throughout that time, he used his training in psychology to observe and record the special behaviors that turn salespeople into Award-Winning Salespeople. He explains those behaviors in his book, ALPHABETICAL BASIC CONCEPTS™ OF SELLING that now appears on the national Insight Edge Top 30 Business Books List. This year, the Birmingham City School System will be teaching Selling using his book.