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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
Having Sales Conversations…..
Imagine, you are sitting at an airport, on a plane, perhaps in a Starbucks, or at a large event and you start talking to a stranger next to you. It doesn’t matter who starts the conversation. But how does it start? Perhaps both of you just shared a common experience–you saw something happen near you. “What did you think about that speaker?” “Did you see that…?” If you are on an airplane, it may be, “Is Paris your home, or are you going on from there….?” Or, “That book you are reading looks interesting.” Or, “How is your trip going?” […]
Meeting And Call Planning, Getting The Most Out Of Each Meeting
I’ve been revisiting a lot of selling basics. We take for granted that people, us, understand the basic of selling. What we do, why we do it, who it’s for….. The reality is few training programs address these things well, focusing instead on how we do these things. And, over time, we forget these basics, running on autopilot. We just do what we have always done, moving unconsciously through our and our customer’s days. And we can see the results of this! Customers don’t want to see us, they prefer learning through other methods. They tell us we don’t understand […]
Qualifying, A Primer
I’ve been writing a series of posts about selling basics. Too often, we take for granted that people understand these. We toss the words around, assuming people understand what we are talking about, what it means, and how it works. In reality, people don’t understand. The link to the series is here. I’ll be adding more over the coming weeks. Today, I’m focusing on qualifying. Yeah, I know many of you will say, “Well dugghhh, Dave, we know all about it and how important it is, after all, we’ve been selling for years…..” The reality, as I review pipelines, win/losses, […]
Do We Want To Eliminate Objections
I’ve seen a series of posts offering tricks and techniques to eliminating objections. Every day, we see experts commenting on objections, “how to overcome them, how to handle them, how to eliminate them.” Objections are often positioned as a battle between sellers and the customer, with our objective to prevail, defeating the customers’ objections On reflection, I thought, “Do we want to eliminate objections? Are we losing the opportunity to leverage objections in more meaningful and impactful ways?” Most of the pundits talk about objections like, “I don’t have the time, I’m not the right person, we don’t have a […]
Why Does Our Sales Engagement Look More Like Eating At A Cafeteria, Than Fine Dining
I read a fascinating study from GTM Partners. One of the observations was, “There is an average of 8 handoffs in the average customer acquisition and delivery process.” As I read that, the image of eating in a cafeteria struck me. Think of the last cafeteria you ate in. A mind numbing experience. You grab a tray, start walking down the line. You may have a choice of a couple of salads, the server behind the counter hands you what you ask for, then you hit side dishes. Someone spoons out the vegetables you ask for, then turns their attention […]
A Forecasting Tutorial
It was surprising to see the reactions to my post, Pipeline, Tutorial. Mistakenly, I had assumed people understood the basics around pipeline management, how to use the pipeline as a tool for maximizing personal performance, and other things. They don’t, I got a lot of great feedback about the post. But it caused other requests, people started asking for posts on other “basics.” It’s interesting, we toss these concepts around quite a bit, assuming we have a common understanding of them, the reality is we don’t. As a result, we waste a lot of time, misapplying the concepts. In the […]