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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
What Are The Two Biggest Factors Impacting Your Win Rate?
I get into a lot of conversations with sales people and leaders about winning business. Win rates are too low, I ask people what they think they need to do to increase the win rate. Usually the answers have something to do with product/offering capabilities and competitiveness, and the standby-price. But, as we dive into really understanding what most impacts win rates, we find two factors dominate: First, we are chasing the wrong deals. Second, too many of the deals we chase aren’t real. Both of these are qualification issues, and the fastest way to improve sales performance is to […]
All Of What We Do Is Really About People
Everything we read about and encounter is about some sort of digital transformation. It could be a business transformation, buying/selling, or even social transformation. Technology and automation takes a greater part of our lives. Years ago, usually it was scientists and engineers that talked about algorithms–now they pervade every aspect of our lives. Too often, we seem more comfortable communicating with or through our digital surrogates. As I write this article, I have seen a news report of robots now able to reproduce themselves and an article touting DHaaS, Digital Humans as a Service. We seem to be on a […]
“Advancing The Sale”
Most of our time, as sales people, is figuring out, “What do we do next to win this deal?” We focus on the steps to advance the sale. We think of things like, “Who are the decisionmakers, how do we reach them? How do we respond to competition? What more information should we be providing them? What do we need to do to get a decision by the date we need it?” It’s always important to think about the things we need to do next for each opportunity. But I wonder, what are we missing? What if we shifted our […]
The Webinar…..
I received an email from someone I respect. It was for a webinar on a very intriguing issue around Digital Transformation. Since I respect this individual and he had an interesting panel of guest speakers, I decide I would sign up for it. I filled the enrollment form, and was about to hit the “Enroll” button. I noticed the “sponsors” for the webinar. I knew what would happen, the moment I hit the “enroll” button. I hesitated, thinking, “Is this webinar likely to be so good that I am voluntarily opening myself to the onslaught the follows when I hit […]
How Do You Want To Be Sold?
Not long ago, I was on a Zoom call with a bunch of CROs. At some point in the conversation, someone started talking about all the inept prospecting being inflicted on her. She complained about the emails, the constant junk calls on her mobile, the inept and inappropriate LinkedIn and other social media outreaches. Everyone piled on, sharing their experiences and their “favorite” bad prospecting ploys (Found a lot of great materials for Hank Barnes’ #FridayFails.) All the things you would expect came up in the conversation, absence of targeting, lack of understanding about the company and the individual, poor […]
It’s Prediction Season Again
It’s that time of year where it’s fashionable to make predictions about the big issues for sales, marketing, and customer experience. Various experts and “gurus” discuss their view of the “big issues,” we face and changes for the coming year. Many are very good, some are intended to stir up controversy, some are promoting the offerings of the guru. I have mixed feelings when people ask me for my predictions. Most of the time I feel like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day. It seems every year we go through the same thing–perhaps updated with new buzzwords or with a […]