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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
Who’s Our Ideal Customer?
I’ve taken a break from my series “Things We Thought We Knew About Selling But Really Didn’t.” Restarting it, I want to talk about our Ideal Customers–or our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile.) We toss the term around casually, but when I look at too many pipelines or prospecting programs, the ICP is not discernible. We have a tendency to try to sell to anyone. If someone has visited our website, if they are on a procured mailing list, if they fog a mirror, we try to engage them. If our pipelines are lean, we cast a wider net. We relax […]
Value Realization Is Only Table Stakes, What Differentiates Us?
Recently, I read a pretty old article in HBR: Business Marketing: Understanding What Customers Value. It’s a good article, written in 1998. It presents what all of us, at the time, focused on in our value positioning/creation. I learned this and have taught it to thousands of sellers, it’s the value realized through the implementation of our solutions. We have always focused on this as our value proposition. The reality, is the other solutions, those offered by our competitors, probably offer similar value. Of course, there are small nuances and differences; “we do it this way, they do it differently…. […]
“It’s The Way We Put It Together, That Sets Us Apart”
Too often, when we look at high performance organizations or sellers, we tend to focus on one or two things they do, attributing those their success. “High performers leverage technology…..” “High performers are better prospectors….” “They create much superior value…” “They have consistently better pipelines….” “They leverage social platforms….” ……and on and on… We can go on and on with the single things that high performing people and organizations do better than others. And, too often, those “single performance levers,” have to do with something someone is selling. Perhaps a sales methodology, technology/tools, a service or consulting program. We nurture […]
Our Fears Of Losing….
Classically, we tend to view winning and losing as two sides of the same coin. If we don’t win, we lose and vice versa. As a result, we are supposed to focus on those things that cause us to win. The problem is, fear of losing more often freezes us. We choose to do nothing–or keep doing the same. By doing this, we may not win. But more importantly we don’t lose! Let me restate this. We are committed to not losing! But that doesn’t imply a commitment to winning. It is human nature to want to minimize loss. We […]
Ask Us (Almost) Anything!
I’m excited to announce a new LiveStream series! Aaron Evans and I are cohosting a series, Ask Us (Almost) Anything! Aaron is someone I’ve deeply respected for some time. He has one of the most thoughtful points of view on selling that I’ve experienced—though sometimes we disagree. We, also, share a deep pride in our profession, with hopes to see it continue to grow and improve in the value sellers create with customers. Aaron and I go back and forth with each other. Asking questions, challenging each other on different ideas. We each, field questions from sellers everyday. Frequent readers […]
Seller Engagement, Are We Asking Ourselves The Right Questions?
We are encountering unprecedented turnover, engagement, talent acquisition/retention issues, at all levels in selling roles. The great resignation, quiet quitting, employee engagement, and other terms have become commonplace in corporate talent conversations. At the same time, we read about “burn out.” Simultaneously, we are facing recession and talent shortages in key seller roles. Leaders look at substantive layoffs, while at the same time continue critical recruiting. We see declines in tenure, at all levels in selling. Tenures of roughly 11 months! Leaders are struggling with what to do……. They ask, “How do we create comp plans that attract and retain […]