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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
On Differentiation
Differentiation is critical in buying/selling. Differentiation gives buyers choices and helps them choose. We invest in never ending differentiation battles: “My product is better than the others, we have more features and functions, we have a more impressive customer base, we have great references, we have high NPS scores, we are cheaper……” Our websites are filled with comparative charts, listing features/functions, capabilities compared with the alternatives. And we ensure we always have more “check” marks in our columns than the alternatives. And our competitors have their versions of those charts. We spend so much time focusing on how different we […]
Preoccupation/Self-Absorption
We are constantly preoccupied. We have “to-do” lists filling our heads. We endless tasks and project that have to get done. Others have expectations on us. Whether it’s our managers, people we work with, customers, our families. Sometimes, we create it ourselves. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been so preoccupied with something that I’ve lost track of time, I’ve been late to meetings, I’ve missed other things that are important. Sometimes, we are preoccupied with distractions. We find ourselves doom scrolling through our devices. We don’t want to miss anything causing us to be distracted by […]
A Malaise, “I Don’t Care…..”
This is one of those more reflective posts. I don’t know that I have solutions or ideas about what we might do. I’m not even sure if I understand the issue or the problem. I’ve written a little bit about it before, “Something’s Happening Here…” But I find more people talking to me about this issue, with the same confusion. Over the past few years, there’s been a “malaise” I’ve been seeing in business. Sometimes it seems to be burnout, sometimes it’s overload or overwhelm, sometimes it’s genuine confusion. We are experiencing a confluence of things, most of us have […]
Where’s The Customer?
In the press of developing and executing our GTM strategies, there’s a tendency to be preoccupied with our own organizations, products, goals. It’s easy to understand how that happens, and it happens to all of us. But over time, it’s easy to get distracted. We get focused on our actions. More marketing programs, more outreach, higher levels of activity, more pipeline, and on and on. We review data about the work we do and whether we are doing enough work, seldom questioning whether it is the right work. We focus on the things we do, losing sight of our customers. […]
Selling As A Team Sport
I suppose it’s human nature to be self centered, focused on those things that impact each of us, our goals, dreams, and aspirations. Within business, we focus relentlessly on our own performance objectives/goals/comp. We are consumed by the day to day activities and tasks critical to achieving those goals. I talk to many sellers frustrated by the “obstacles” standing in their way, “Just leave me alone, let me do my job!” Increasingly, I talk to sellers who feel isolated in doing their jobs. It’s useful to pause to reflect on the reality that selling is a job that is 100% […]
Needs Vs Wants
We’re taught, and I have taught about the importance of “Need Identification.” We sophisticated discovery questions focused on probing customer needs, understanding their requirements. When we are at our best, we deeply understand the customer business processes. We understand the challenges/problems they face. We understand the impact of those problems. We understand the consequences for doing nothing. And we work with our customers to help them understand these things. We do analysis, we provide assessments, analyses, business cases, justifications. These are accompanied by testimonials and case studies about how we help our customers address their needs. We equip our customers […]