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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
Isn’t Buyer Enablement Everyone’s Job?
I read a fascinating discussion on LinkedIn. As with many discussions, there were many aspects I thought were enlightening, some I agreed with, many I disagreed with. But the post started with statements around “Buyers only engage with sellers after 80% of the buying process is done.” “Buyers don’t want to talk to sellers.” The ensuing discussion suggested we needed to focus on “Buyer Enablement.” People chimed in with lots of ideas and solutions, “Isn’t marketing’s job buyer enablement,” was the opinion of many. Many, including the author suggested the establishment of a “Buyer Enablement” function. It would become the […]
Thinking Outside The “Box”
Recently, I attended a conference. I sat with a group focused on GTM strategies and how they were structuring their strategies to drive growth. A few of the panelists started showing organization charts, discussing how they were restructuring their organizations to improve results. Each chart showed hierarchies of boxes, each with a functional name. Some showed how they were restructuring sales and marketing, moving to a Revenue structure. The presented the “before” and “after” org charts, the only thing that seemed to have changed is the CRO role and a RevOPs hierarchy combining marketing and sales ops. In the presentation […]
Can You Do What AI Can’t?
We have become enamored with all the things AI can do to help sellers. It provides the potential of eliminating all sorts of tasks that, somehow, seems to fill our time. Updating CRM, drafts of prospecting letters, drafts of proposals, research on industry, market, customer issues. The list of things that filled our time goes on. And as both our understanding of AI and AI, itself, develops, there are things that AI can’t do. But they are critical to our jobs. Can you do those things? Are you doing those things with the time that AI is freeing from other […]
Coaching Must Focus On “What’s Next….”
We have endless tools to help us analyze sales performance. Whether it’s performance dashboards, looking at performance to date, or conversational intelligence tools that help us understand what happened. We know the gap, and our coaching focuses on, “You have to make the number, go do more!” There are a number of variations of this, but most of it is retrospective. All performance data is retrospective. It tells us what has happened. But it doesn’t necessarily inform us about why it’s happened. And it does nothing to tell us what we must do in going forward. But too often, our […]
“You Have 30 Days……!”
I’ve been reading a number of articles about people being terminated, or put on PIPs, 30 days to fix the problem. It culminated, today, in a discussion I had with one of the most talented CROs I’ve met. She was being recruited by another company. She said, “Dave, their key issue in recruiting someone is how to fix their Q3 EBITDA problem!” This coming from a $B plus organization. I responded, “Hold on a moment, let me look at my watch…… Oh, we are a month + into Q3, even if you started today, it’s impossible for you to fix […]
What Is Your Value Proposition?
We know value propositions are critical to our success with our customers. Without a differentiated value proposition, perhaps the only way we can win is on price. And we know that competing only on price is an unsustainable strategy. We know that value propositions are not just an “end.” “Buy our product, you will see these results……” We know that we have to create value in every interaction with the customer. And that value accumulates, builds trust, and confidence. And doing this, consistently, through the relationship enables us to grow and expand the relationship with the customer. We know the […]