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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
What’s Driving Your Customer’s Need To Buy?
Understanding what’s driving our customers to change, to address a new opportunity, to solve a problem is critical to our success as sales people. We need to understand what’s driving their need to buy. However, too often, when I ask sales people about the need to buy, they describe it in terms of their products or solution category: “They need to buy HR Software” “They need to buy servers” “They need to buy IT Development services” “They need to buy our semiconductors” “They need a CRM system” “They need to buy…….” We can never describe our customer’s needs to buy […]
Obsessing On The Competition
The sales call started nicely. The sales person started asking me questions about my business, what I wanted to achieve, challenges we faced. He asked the alternatives we were considering. Then things went south, really quickly. He asked me what I like about the competition. At first, I thought it a clever approach. He might then start to talk about his solution in the context of the things I highlighted. He could help me learn about his company’s approach to dealing with the same things. He might help me think about different ways to achieve the same goal. He might […]
Removing Obstacles!
When you look at the job of the sales person or that of the manager, at it’s core, it’s really about removing obstacles. For sales people, it’s about removing obstacles to our customers’ success. It’s helping them achieve their goals–business and personal. It’s helping them recognize there are things that may be blocking them from realizing their goals or dreams. It’s helping them navigate all the things that get in the way of their moving forward, to help them develop and execute a plan. Managers and leaders, likewise, have the same responsibility to their customers–their people. Their job is to […]
Talking About Virtual Selling
I’ve been asked to participate in a podcast on virtual selling. I’m looking forward to it, it’s an important topic. When I was originally asked, I replied, “What do you mean by virtual selling?” I think that’s a fundamental question, one that I’m not sure I know the answer to. But I think I know what “Virtual Selling,” isn’t. To too many, it’s about using tools like Zoom, Teams, and other tools. To others, a major part is WFH. These may be components of Virtual Selling, but Virtual Selling is probably much more and much different. Likewise, many think Virtual […]
I Suck In Prospecting!
I’m embarrassed to admit this. I have some real prospecting problems. It’s embarrassing, I write about prospecting a lot, I speak, I coach people, we run prospecting workshops. But there’s a part of prospecting, I’m embarrassed to say, that I’m really horrible at. I’m a terrible prospect. It’s embarrassing. I’m supposed to be pretty good at this stuff, but I’ve discovered I’m probably one of the worst prospects around. I try to live up to my responsibilities as a prospect, but too consistently fail miserably. Let me confess my inadequacies I ignore way too many emails. I realize sales people […]
False Choices
My good friend, George Bronten, posted a survey on LinkedIn. He posed the question, “Which of the following workflow is more important, Prospecting, Opportunity Management, Account Development, Partners.” My immediate reaction to this is, “This is a false choice, we have to do all of this!” The reality is that we have to do the complete job–as individuals and organizations. None of these areas stands alone–each impacts the other, each cannot exist without the other. Unfortunately, leaders treat these as independent. Right now, too many people believe, “If we only solve our prospecting problem, everything would be great!” So much […]