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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
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 […]
Are You Solving For Symptoms?
Symptoms are the indicators that something is wrong, something is not functioning/performing as it should. When we have symptoms of a cold, we already have the cold. We can’t do anything to prevent it, perhaps, we can just make things a little easier to manage through it. And, we may miss the opportunity to prevent the cold from recurring. In business and sales, we see similar things. We see symptoms or indicators that something is not right, or not working. We address those symptoms–and we may get through until the next time, and the next, and the next…. But symptoms […]
Do Work That Inspires You!
There are no easy sales or leadership jobs. The work is tough. As much as we try to find shortcuts and the “Easy Button,” we have to do the stuff that produces the results we are accountable for. We face challenges every day. Finding and engaging our customers. Developing and executing strategies that facilitate our customers’ buying journeys, culminating in shared success. Aligning internal resources to support our work with customers. Dealing with problems, both those that our customers have and within our own organizations. Everyday, we see increased complexity, more disruption, information overwhelm, constant change. Our customers go through […]