Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
If Practice Makes Perfect, Why Do We Keep Practicing The Wrong Things?
We know to master any skill, it takes practice. It may be Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to mastery. Or we look at what great athletes, artist, musicians, and others do. They are constantly practicing to improve their skills and capabilities. We know that to get really good at anything, we have to continue to work on developing our capabilities to do the things that produce the outcomes we hope to achieve. With sales, it’s no different. We have to continue to practice, we have to develop our skills, learning and improving our ability to execute. We learn through repeated prospecting […]
There Is No Excuse For Not Doing Your Homework!
To the annoyance of most school children, virtually every night, their parents ask a question, “Did you do your homework?” Growing up, sometimes I would blow off doing my homework, I’d not lie, but I’d find a way not to answer the question. Eventually, that would catch up with me, I’d not be prepared for class, my grades would suffer. I learned, it was easier and better to do my homework, then to fake it. Sometimes, particularly, on difficult assignments, my parents would review my homework. They weren’t doing it to check up on me, but they wanted to help […]
“Did I Do My Best To….”
I’m a big fan of Marshall Goldsmith. One of the methods he uses to help people continuously improve is his set of questions, usually phrased, “Did I do my best to….” I’ve been using this approach, daily, for about 4 years. Each day, I rate myself on about 22 questions. some as simple as “Did I do my best to eat healthy foods…. or exercise.” Some are more challenging like, “Did I do my best to make a difference in someone’s life..” The questions have evolved over time, at one point there were 28 areas I questioned myself on, it’s […]
Win/Loss Analysis–Are You Learning As Much As You Should?
I’m always stunned by how little win/loss analysis we do. Of course, when we win or lose a deal, there is some reason code–usually some drop down in CRM that gives us a handful of choices about why we won or why we lost. Sales people usually don’t put much thought into it, wins are generally the result of the “fantastic job they did selling,” losses are either price or product deficiencies–often both. The win/loss reasons don’t give us much insight into what really is happening, or what we might do about it. Sometimes, usually on the “mega-deals,” we might […]
Empathy Is Insufficient!
We know empathy is important in working with others, whether it’s our customers, our peers, or our people. If we can’t understand what they face in doing their jobs, what they care about, what their hopes, dreams, or fears, doubts might be, we can’t connect with them in meaningful ways. Too often, however, the concept of empathy is absent in our interactions. Customers are very abstract—they are leads to be moved through our process, from person to person. We focus on our goals and productivity, we pitch our products/solutions. We don’t understand our customers’ businesses, we don’t understand who they […]
The “Heavy Lifting” In Buying And Selling
Selling is difficult. We have to find opportunities for our products and solutions. We have to assess the customer interest in considering our solutions. We have to understand what the customer is trying to do and demonstrate how our solutions are the best in helping them achieve their goals. We have to be aware of the alternatives the customer considers and position our solutions favorably. We have to move the customer to a decision, hopefully culminating in an order. This process can take months for very complex solutions. Dozens of people may be involved in the process. Buying is disorderly–where […]