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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
We Don’t Create Value By Discounting It!
I was doing a deal review. We were in the final stages of closing a big deal. The team had worked really hard. It’s the end of the month/quarter/year. They not only wanted the deal, but they needed the deal. Then it happened. The customer says, “We are almost there, but we’ve hit a roadblock…….” I won’t go into the details, but the customer presented a fascinating discussion. Neatly hidden was, “The way we solve this is we need an adjustment to payment terms, can you give us the first X months free?” Hidden in this elegant argument was a […]
Why Does Your “Bot” Want To Talk To Me?
We are in a period where automation has run amuck. “Bots” and Artificial Intelligence (with the emphasis on Artificial) are running our outreach campaigns. Whether through email, phone, social platforms, in our efforts to drive volume and velocity, we have surrendered everything to our automation tools. Often, I get an outreach, I respond—which is fantastic for the sender. I ask, “What is it that you want to talk about, why do you think it is relevant to me?” “What do you know about our business that causes you to think we should talk?” Most of the time, I get no […]
It Really Is Only About Me!
Every day, three times a day, I go through my inbox—both email and social channels. Every day, particularly in the social channels like LinkedIn, I am inundated with invitations or requests much like the following: I would like to see if there is a possibility for you to join a free demo to show my and incredible service to help B2B marketing departments with data driven marketing campaigns. (Bolding is my edit) Our inboxes are filled with people wanting to pitch their products and solutions. Some are somewhat targeted, we might be in their Ideal Customer Profile, their products might […]
The “Adrenaline Rush” Of Crises
I have to confess, I’m a bit of an Adrenaline junkie. I revel in a crisis, I’m challenged and excited about tough problems. Talking to me about a critical deal where we must do something now, energizes me. Show me a bad pipeline that we have to “fix” quickly, I roll up my sleeves and dive in. As I reflect on my career, most of it has been in solving very tough problems, I’ve done turnarounds as an executive, I’ve been an executive in a couple of high growth start-ups. In our consulting practice, we work with some of the […]
“What If You Thought Of Things Differently?”
There is one fundamental question that all sales people and managers must think about and ask every day, “What if you thought of things differently?” Sadly, I’m not certain we consciously consider this issue enough. This question is the foundation of our engagement customer engagement strategies. It gets customers to think about how our solutions might be a better fit than our competitors. Or it gets them to challenge the status quo. It may get them to rethink how they get things done, how they might grow, how they might address new opportunities. This question is the foundation of every […]
Your Customers Aren’t Buying Your Product, So Why Do You Keep Selling It?
I’ve been sitting in a lot of deal reviews recently. The clients are in varied businesses, ranging from software technologies, medical devices, capital equipment, electronic components, financial services, and so forth. But in each of these reviews, there is a common pattern. Whenever I ask the questions, “What is the customer trying to do, What are they seeking to change about how they grow their businesses,” the responses follow a similar pattern. “They need to buy data security software, they need to buy electronic components, they need to buy cloud management software, they need to buy…..” 100% of the time, […]