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
Moving From Information Scarcity To Abundance
In the “good old days,” perhaps 10+ years ago, salespeople were the primary source of information about potential solutions for their customers. Customers and prospects sought sales people to learn about new solutions, trends in the markets, what other similar companies were doing. Customers, also, looked for other sources of information–through networking with others, conferences, trade magazines, research companies, consultants, and others. But getting this information, particularly high quality, trustworthy information was a challenge. Customers often found themselves wanting more, or questioning the quality of that which they were getting. They struggled with the issue, “Is there anything else we […]
Moving From Product Features To Insight
Recently, I was doing a workshop with a really great sales team. We were talking about how to engage prospects and customers more effectively. They enthusiastically embraced the idea that we have to talk about what customers are interested in; we have to engage customers in issues critical to them and their business. But then we decided to practice these principles. We started looking at the conversations we needed to have with prospects. As good as this team was, they always started with, “Our products do these things….” As much as they tried they were stuck, they always started the […]
Just Because Your Customer Isn’t Saying “No”………
Too often, we think that because the customer isn’t saying “No” to us, we assume they must agree or be aligned with what we are doing. But the absence of a “No,” doesn’t mean they are saying “Yes.” Too often we read the absence of “No’s” with hopeful optimism. The fact that we continue our discussions with the customer builds our hope the deal is real, the customer likes what we are discussing, the customer is favorably disposed to what we are selling. The longer this persists, the more we believe, “We’ve got this…..,” we may even commit the opportunity […]
Who’s Coaching Our Customers?
Everyone needs coaching. I’ve spent a lot of time in this blog talking about coaching as key to driving performance in sales people. I’ve written extensively about directive and non-directive coaching–focusing on non-directive as the most impactful in helping sales people learn and grow. Effective coaching is really a shared learning experience between the manager and the person being coached. Ideally, the manager learns more about their people when they coach. The sales person learns how to think about what they are doing and how to be more effective–whether we are coaching deal, account, territory management, prospecting, or pipeline skills. […]
Is Trust Sufficient?
Colleen Francis is running a fascinating survey on LinkedIn. She’s posed the question, “If buyers know you, like you, and trust you, will they buy from you? It caused me to reflect, “is trust sufficient?” Without a doubt, trust is can be a critical element in the customer’s buying decision—we look at the opposite condition, “Would people buy from people they don’t trust?” We are hesitant to buy from people/organizations we don’t trust. We may do this when the risk is very low, when we are very familiar and confident in the offering, when there is no other reasonable opportunity. […]
Value Is Not A Destination
Too often, when sales people talk about value, it seems it’s some sort of fixed outcome customers should expect if they buy the sales person’s solution. Corporate web sites and sales people talk about, “Our value proposition is…..” In all honesty, when in my early years in selling, I tended to position value as the endpoint customers would achieve if they bought the products I sold. It’s a pretty antiquated view of value. The reality is that we must be creating value with the customer for the entire life cycle of our relationship. From their very first digital engagement with […]