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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
Can You Answer These Two Questions?
This is Pop Quiz, answer these two questions—choose any of your important customers to think about the answers: How does your customer make money?How do your customers think? These are two fundamental questions–they are what dominates your customers’ thinking. To engage our customers in business relevant conversations, we have to be able to answer and talk about these two questions. Some of you may be thinking, “Dave, this is easy, they sell stuff and get revenues from those sales……” But that doesn’t answer the question of, “How do customers make money?” There are hundreds of things the customers must consider […]
Have We Become Complacent?
I’m a great fan of Jeffrey Phillips writing on all aspects of innovation. Recently, he wrote an intriguing post, Will You Shape Innovation Or Will It Shape You? It’s fascinating and a few sentences in the middle of the post struck me, getting my mind spinning on a question for sellers, “Have we become complacent?” Since we are approaching year-end, it’s often a time to sit back and reflect. Think about the issue and your own selling organizations. We have plenty of evidence that might indicate we have, perhaps unwittingly, become complacent. At least 10 years of a relatively robust […]
Selling Is So Tough!!!
I was struck by a post by Steve Hall on LinkedIn. Steve and I share a similar sense of humor and perspectives on selling. It’s funny, over the years, I never really heard a lot of complaining about how tough selling is, at least until recently. Of course, we have always been morally obligated to whine about our quotas when they are assigned. We are should be disappointed when we lose a deal that we have worked so hard on. We get frustrated when we are trying to make things happen, but they don’t. We get impatient with what seems […]
And The Insanity Continues……
We seem to be in a continued death spiral with our customer engagement strategies. I recently read a post, Why Buyer Engagement Is Harder Than Ever And 4 Ways To Improve It. While I’m a great fan of Gartner and the research, I had mixed feeling about this post. I guess the best ways to characterize my reactions are: Well Duuugggghhhh…….. And…….. Oh Shit!!! We’ve known, for ages, that Buyers Don’t Want To Talk To Sellers! It’s now up to 72% that prefer a rep-free experience, and I anticipate this to increase in the coming year. We’ve known the number […]
How Do Your Customers Make Money?
In the past few days, I’ve had several separate conversations with people, basically on business acumen. They were fascinating, but apalling. The lack of knowledge about things that seem so basic to engaging our customers in business relevant conversations is shocking. One very talented Regional VP shared that as he is conducting reviews with his people, he asks a couple of simple questions, “How does this customer make money? How does what you are proposing impact that?” The reactions to this question are fascinating. He’s says most of the time people look at him quizzically, seeming to be thinking, “Why […]
A Holiday Present (Mostly For Me!!)
Some of you may be seeing something VERY NEW as you are reading this post. We’ve moved the site out of the Stone Ages, into more modern times. We’ve completely redone the blog site. For many of you that struggled so patiently with the old site, thank you for your patience! Things here are actually working! You can sign up for newsletters add comments, do everything you would expect to do in a modern website! It was my lack of attention that created such an unpleasant experience. I’ve been so busy that I just wasn’t paying attention to the problems […]