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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
Going Through The Motions Or Doing The Work?
Every organization I work with has a “Buyer focused selling process.” Every organization has deal management, pipeline, and account management processes. Every organization has taken their people through the latest greatest sales training, spends thousands per person on tools. Every organization focuses on their ICP. Every manager says they coach their people. When I go through my checklist of the strategies, processes, tools, training, programs, systems that help drive sales effectiveness, virtually every organization checks all the boxes. They have the things that should support high levels of sales performance. I begin to wonder, if they have all this stuff […]
“Nothing Happens Until Someone Sells Something”
We all say this, “Nothing happens until someone sells something.” I don’t know how many times I’ve used that expression. I was reminded of it reading an article the other day. I started reflecting on this. It’s natural for we “sales” types to think about this. Our companies can’t build products, offer services, invoice, or get revenue until we sell something. But on deeper reflection, it really is very self centered, and inaccurate. Nothing happens until someone decides they need to make a change. This may be addressing a new opportunity, it could be solving a problem. There could be […]
Performance Management
As leaders, our jobs are to maximize the performance of each individual and the organization. But, too often, we don’t take the time to really understand performance and what drives good/bad performance. Instead, we manage by the numbers or dashboards. If the numbers aren’t measuring up, we take action. It may be going to people saying things to the effect of, “You aren’t making your numbers, do more!” Or what we are doing isn’t working, so we do something else. Perhaps we read a blog post or attended a webcast where some guru offered a miracle cure, “If you just […]
Rethinking BDRs?
I recently read a post from Dave Kurlan entitled, “Why I Believe We Should Blow Up The Business Development Role….” He makes the argument that we put our most inexperienced sales people into one of the toughest roles in selling–inciting interests, identifying new opportunities, and prospecting. A lot of what Dave says makes sense. Why would we use our least experienced people to create the first impression with many of our customers–particularly senior decision makers? How could they possibly have a high impact conversation with senior people? Aren’t we setting them up for failure? I have huge problems with our […]
On Pricing, Discounting, and Value
There are two retailers I’m fascinated with. One is LVMH. It’s a collection of some of the most prestigious consumer brands in the world. They call each of the brands, “houses.” They have brands like Tiffany, Bvlgari, Fendi, Louis Vuitton. All are premium priced and have the brand image of the most expensive, prestigious brands in the world. Last year, they did about 44.7 B Euros in revenue and 8 B Euros in gross profit. The second is Dollar General. They sell low priced products, typically around $1 (Though I have seen products at the outrageous price of $7). Last […]
Discounting And Defending Value
We try to create value with our customers. Our value has various elements. The value we bring to our customers in helping them navigate their buying journey. After all, we are experts, while our customers struggle to buy. The value our solutions create in solving the customer problem, or enabling them to address new opportunities. Hopefully, this is quantified in terms of ROI or some other financial metrics. The personal value we create for the individuals involved in the buying process. Things like, “keeping their job,” “simplifying their lives,” etc. While difficult to quantify, these are important elements of the […]