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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
The Problem With Our “Discovery Process”
We’ve all been taught the importance of “discovery.” It’s that process where we pummel our prospects with questions to discover their needs, priorities, and their decision-making process. It’s in the discovery process that we actually figure out what it takes to win–earn the customer’s business. But there are several problems with the way we do this: First, too often, we really don’t do discovery, we focus on pitching our products and companies, not taking the time to understand what the customer is trying to achieve. Instead, arrogantly, we leave it to the customer to figure out whether what we do […]
Is Your Solution Easy To Buy?
We focus a lot of our sales enablement and related efforts on making our products and services easier to sell. We provide training, tools, coaching, support to our sales people. We want them to master everything about our products and solutions so they can easily sell them But we are missing something important. Just because we are making our offerings easier to sell, doesn’t mean we will sell more. We need to think about how we make our products easier to buy. Too often, when I talk about this, people think about the ordering process. They think about on-line shopping […]
Not Everyone Wants To Be, Or Should Be A Manager!
The other day, I had a conversation with a salesperson. She wanted some coaching on her career and how she might advance and develop. She said, “Dave, it seems the only way to advance in my sales career is to be a manager. But I love selling, I love working accounts and doing deals. I’m not sure I want to be a manager—but I still want to advance in my career….” She’s focused on a critical issue too few leaders pay attention to. Not everyone wants to be or should be a manager. We need to think of career paths […]
The Power Of A Smile
This is a bit of self indulgence, but, at the same time, an “a-ha” moment. We spend millions of dollars trying to connect–with customers, with our employees, with our leaders. There are tricks, techniques, processes to help us connect. The secret of connecting, in deep ways, is simple. It’s a smile. Not one of those pasted on smiles. But a genuine smile–driven by caring, compassion, and love. Even for a stranger. A genuine smile overcomes everything. It creates connection, it establishes meaning. It is the basis of caring. And that’s all our customers want to know. That’s all our people […]
Please, Tell Me Something New!
I’m sure you are victim of the kind of email and social outreach I get. What spurred this post was an InMail I received this morning. It was a prospecting post, the same one, word for word, this individual sends me every month. Each time, my response is the same, “Thank you, but I’m not interested in learning more. I wish you the best.” Then I reflect on much of the email prospecting I get. There are those with a message, followed weekly (because we are supposed to have 12-16 touches) with “Did you get my email on this topic?” […]
Don’t Let Your Customer Buy Because Of What Your Product Costs!
We set ourselves up for failure, we set our customers up for failure when we focus on the price–even the costs of our products and services. Sadly, most selling and much buying focuses on the wrong thing, “What’s the price?” We train our customers to focus on price, by the way we sell. Early in their buying process, we bring up our price, “We are cheaper than the competition….” “We are willing to discount….” “If you buy by the end of the quarter….” As a result of the way we sell, we’ve changed the way customer buy. We’ve shifted their […]