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Making A Difference – Thoughts, Observations and Opinions
This is Dave Brock’s Blog.
It offers my views on a variety of business, sales, marketing, and leadership topic. My goal is to make a difference for you, the reader, in both your professional and personal lives.
Latest Posts
“My Team Would Love To Learn More About Your Company…..”
The first sentence of the LinkedIn message was not dissimilar to the majority of emails and LI messages I get. David, my team and I would love to get the chance to learn more about your company. The author started with the concept she had been taught, “Make it about the customer, tell them how you want to learn more about them, their strategies, and challenges.” I write and advise clients about this, myself. Until we understand the customer and what they are trying to achieve, we don’t have a basis in engaging them in deeper conversations. Of course, this […]
Can You Answer This Question: “Tell Me More…”
I’ve noticed a huge gap in how we equip and train our sellers, how we help them engage our customers in high impact conversations that focus on them and their problems, not pitching our projects. This gap became bigger with Challenger, as we equipped our people to provide “Insights.” And more recently, with new customer research and AI tools, the gap has become even greater. We equip our people to provide a certain insight, for example, “We’ve noticed this to be an issue with similar customers, are you seeing the same thing?” Usually, we train them what response to expect, […]
“We’re So Vain, We Probably Think It About Us….”
One of my favorite songs, as a kid, was Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain….” It was not only a great song, but provoked decades of discussion about who she was singing about. Fast forwarding to current times, based on how we engage our customers, we demonstrate a similar vanity. We think our customer care about us–they obsess about our companies, our products, and how great we are. I can imagine an updated version of the song, “We’re so vain, we probably think the customers care about us…” At least, we conduct our engagement strategies based on our belief that customers […]
“Pursuing Better, Differently……”
I was excited to see the CMO of one of my clients speaking about a pillar their culture, “Pursuing Better, Differently….” It’s such a critical concept, particularly if we want to stand out to our customers and differentiate our companies. It’s so important, if we want to continue to grow, outperforming others. It’s, also, so obvious–or should be. But how many organizations actually do this? Somehow, it seems too many believe, we pursue better by being the same. (head scratching moment…..) We believe we get better by doing more of what we’ve always done. My question is, “Then how do […]
Knowing The Answers Or Knowing What They Mean?
In today’s world, it’s pretty easy to “know the answers.” At least with respect to our products, we have endless content, training, years of experience. We can answer any question customers are likely to have about our products and solutions. We can compare them, factually, with the alternatives, showing how our approach might be superior. We know about, or should know, the problems our solutions address. We should be able to address all the questions a customer might have. We have tools, like ChatGPT, to help us find more answers. We know that CMOs of certain types of businesses are […]
Performance Plans And Performance Planning
Perhaps I’ve not been paying attention. Recently, in conversations with clients and other groups, I’ve been stunned at how few have performance plans in place for their people. Having been raised in organizations that valued performance planning, I had assumed these were common place. Starting my selling career in IBM, we all had them. Much later, when IBM was a customer, in calling on people, I would always ask, “Open your lower right hand drawer and pull out the first folder. I’d like to look at your performance plan….” (We all seemed to keep them in the same place.) Knowing […]