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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
We Won, But…..
We celebrate our wins and victories, as we should. Sometimes, we do a debrief on why we won, so we can learn and improve our execution in future opportunities. Often, we focus on all the things we did; we engaged the right people, we talked about the issues that were important to them, we had a superior solution, we were more compelling than the competition. We usually focus on everything we did right, causing the customer to choose us. But when we do our “win analysis,” we too often miss some important things, and these can be critical to our […]
“Salesperson, Why Are You ‘Ghosting’ Me?”
To be honest, I may respond to less than 5% of the sales outreaches I get. I trash or spam most. But I’ve noticed over 60% of those that I do respond to, I get “ghosted.” By that, I mean, some sales person has taken the trouble to find me and reach out to me, and I’m interested enough to say, “tell me more….” But they disappear. Every day we read of the struggles sales people have in attracting interest, getting people to respond. We spend all sorts of money learning what we might do to better generate interest. We […]
What’s The Most Important Thing?
Everyday, we get pummeled with LinkedIn Surveys asking us “What’s the most important thing…….” Everyday, people doing “research” post surveys asking us to express our views. We’re given a few choices. They are on all sorts of things: Prospecting, doing deals, or something else…. Where we prioritize our time…. Focusing on the numbers or something else…. Insight or pitching or something else…. Which technology is most important, CRM, something else….. Which activities are important……. Customer focus or…….. Current customers or new customers….. Telephone, email, social media, or something else…. Revenue or orders or …….. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry….. (OK, I invented […]
The Questions We Ask, Shape The Answers We Get…..
In sales, we learn that questions are critical to our ability to understand our customers and how we might be most helpful. Questions, in addition to eliciting information, opinions and points of view; can enhance both the our customers knowledge and build their confidence in us. It’s always a thrill to ask a customer a question, hopefully deeply insightful, that elicits a response, “No one has ever asked me this before. In fact, I had never considered it myself. Can you help me understand more?” But too often, we ask the wrong questions, both we and the customer fail to […]
Can We Know More Than Our Customers?
Since my earliest days of selling, I have been taught, to create real value and differentiation, I have to know more than my customers. I have to know their markets/industries better than they. I have to know their business better than they, I have to know the issues they face better than they, I have to know what they don’t know but should know. As a result, I’ve always done a lot of research into both my customers and target customers. In my first sales role, I sold exclusively to Money Center Banks. I was able to go to “Banking […]
Developing Your People
As managers, we tend to focus on the “here and now.” We obsess over pipelines, deal strategies, account plans, prospecting. We closely monitor monthly, quarterly goal attainment. If we are doing what we should be doing, as leaders, we are coaching and supporting our people. We are identifying opportunities to improve performance and results. We are getting them resources to help them achieve their goals. We are helping them learn the things they need to do to be successful. And we do this, over and over, quarter after quarter, chasing these goals, maximizing the ability of our people to achieve […]