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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
Do Sellers Really Understand How Businesses Work?
I’ve been reflecting on projects I’ve been helping clients with over the past few years (in reality, I suspect I can trace it back further.) That coupled with conversations with hundreds of sellers and managers, I’ve come to a conclusion that even surprises me. Before I wrote this, I had conversations with a number of colleagues, testing my premise. I had hoped they would prove me wrong. Sadly, they agreed with me. The realization is, most sellers don’t really understand how businesses work. They understand certain parts, for example they can work with their customers, say IT. They understand, somewhat, […]
Business Relevance
Today, I had the pleasure of working with the students of Howard Dover’s UTD Digital Prospecting class. We were talking about the importance of business relevance and acumen in engaging customers. The session was fascinating, the questions were great. I’m so happy these undergraduate students, looking toward careers in sales, are tackling this issue (I wish experienced sales people were as sensitive to this, as they.). I thought it might be useful to share some of the conversation: Why is it important to have an understanding of the customer’s business? Our customers want to know the sales people they engage […]
Collaborative Creativity
I participate in lots of sales calls. Sometimes observing what’s going on, sometimes as a contributor. Most of the time, they seem like “verbal ping pong.” Someone asks a question or makes a statement (seller or customer), the other responds. Back and forth, sometimes agreeing, sometimes objecting, all practiced, mindless responses–back and forth. And every once in a while, someone tries to win by the verbal equivalent of “slamming the ball,” defeating the other, but no one has really won. And these progress through the customer buying process. Call after call, meeting after meeting. But every once in a while, […]
Sales Enablement, Upping The Game….
Again, this is one of those posts where I have to issue a disclaimer upfront. This may be my own ignorance of programs leading sales enablement organizations are implementing. It’s driven by an observation about discussions I hear among sales enablement folks and observations from perusing my feeds. Something I seldom see in sales enablement training and development programs are things that help sellers better understand the worlds of their customers. SE tends to do an outstanding job on product training, sales skills/process/methodology, relevant content, and tools. I don’t see much of a focus on “who is our customer, what […]
Rethinking Account Based Selling
Recently, I was speaking to the leadership team of a sales organization. They were struggling with getting their people to develop and execute their account plans. They had invested a lot in training, content, and other programs to support the account based selling focus. But things weren’t changing. People were going through the motions of developing their account plans, they would review them with management, then they went back to doing their jobs in the way they had always done them. Sometimes, I think we make Account Planning and Account Based Selling more complicated than it needs to be. In […]
What Is “Value Creation?”
We know that we are supposed to create value with our customers through their buying process. But as I talk to sales people, most struggle with what that actually means. Sadly, too many sales people scratch their heads, saying, “Our product is cheaper than the alternatives…….” For those, more knowledgeable, most answers revolve around presenting the capabilities of a product/services and the value the customer will realize. They express value in terms of savings, cost reduction, improved profitability, and sometimes revenue growth. This is important, but it’s only realized after the customer has made a decision and implemented a solution. […]