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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
Our Questions Are Important To Us, But Do They Get At What The Customer Needs To Express?
The questions we ask shape the responses we get. Too often, our questions, whether they are questions we ask our customers or questions managers ask their people, limit our ability to learn and understand the real issues they face. We focus on the issues most important to us–which tend to focus on our products and services–but may miss the issues that are really critical to the customer. We may take the customer down a path that helps us learn, and may help the customer learn more about those things we are interested in. But we and our customers may miss […]
How Do We Win?
Participating in deal reviews, I often ask the question, “How do we win?” The answers are always similar: “We have to show how our product/technology/solution is better than the competition.” “We have to meet or beat the competitors’ prices” “We have to build support across the organization showing them how our solution is the best.” “We have to sweeten the deal in some way.” “We have to get in front of the key decisionmakers and show how we are the best solution.” “We have to leverage our references, telling the customer how great we are.” “We have to get our […]
Attention To Detail….
Perhaps one of the most important capabilities/skills for sales people and managers is “attention do detail.” But I seldom see anyone writing about it–so I will try to change it in this article. Great selling, great leadership are always characterized by attention to detail. Whether it’s probing to determine root causes underlying customer “pain.” Or exploring alternatives with our customers, helping them customers think differently. Or getting underneath the data in our dashboards and understanding “why.” Attention to detail is critical to driving the highest levels of performance in everything we do. Our sales enablement programs look at “Discovery.” We […]
Figuring Things Out!
Sadly, the trend in developing sales people skills is toward a higher level of prescription. We provide email sequences, we script conversations and talking points. We try to formularize all the activities our sales people do with customers. But the world is complex, what our customers face is complex, what our people face is complex. Things change constantly, each customer situation is unique–to them, at a moment in time. We can’t possibly think of everything out people will face, scripting how they handle these situations. Yet, we continue to spoon feed them everything we think they need. And the results […]
Good Revenue And Bad Revenue—Start-Up Version
I know it’s heresy, but not all revenue is good revenue—particularly for start-ups. In fact chasing and winning the wrong deals can be devastating to the long term success of a start-up. But let me backtrack a little bit, I’ve written about this concept quite a bit beore, if you want to read some of the articles, follow the LINK. But let me give a brief recap: Good revenue is: Business we can deliver profitably. Business where we can delight the customer, enabling us to scale within their organization. Business where delighted customers will talk about us and help us […]
Give Your People The Chance To Do Their Jobs!
It’s funny, every once in a while I find myself in similar conversations with different executives. Each starts in a different place, but the underlying issues are all the same. A core issue has come up. It’s actually one that concerns me deeply. “Do we have enough confidence and trust in our people to let them do their jobs?” Let me unpack this just a little. To be able to answer that question with a resounding, “Absolutely, without a doubt,” we have to be clear about a number of things. First, do we have the right people in the job? […]