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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
Sales People Need To Pay Their Way!
Over the past several weeks, I’ve gotten into a number of discussions about the “economics of selling.” They’ve covered the gamut from rationalizing what we spend on sales and sales people, affordability and how much we can invest, to optimizing the investment we make in sales, assuring we get return on those investments. In one conversation, a statement struck me, “Sales people have to pay their own way.” All of a sudden, it struck me that the reality is sales people have to pay the way for everyone in the company, not just paying their own way. Stated differently, everyone’s […]
Why Change?
The salesperson was getting frustrated. We were doing a deal review. It was a huge deal for him, and important deal for the company, for the quarter. He’d been working on the deal for several years. In recent months, he’d finally gotten some key users interested in the product he sold. They had committed to take the proposal to senior management to get approval. “I’m confident this will close this quarter,” he stated. I asked a question, “Why should they change?” The sales person was confused, I suppose a little frustrated with why I, an outside consultant, was questioning him. […]
On Micromanaging And Collaborative Reviews
I was working with a team of frustrated sales people. They had a past sales manager that micromanaged them terribly. The manager would get involved in too many deals. He would constantly dictate next steps. His deal reviews became opportunities where the team updated him on what was happening, so he could dictate the next steps. The entire focus of the manager’s micromanagement was on him and his ability to achieve his goals. They had nothing to do with what the customer was trying to achieve. They had nothing to do the realities they faced in working with customers, with […]
“Do Or Not Do, There Is No Try”
I’m dating myself with this quote from that master philosopher, Yoda. This goes back to the first Star Wars movie in 1977 (Of course, I was in kindergarden at the time 😉 I’m stunned by the number of sales people that don’t understand the principle. Everyday, I encounter sales people who are very busy. They are working very hard to get what they get. The problem is, what they are getting is far short of their target and goals. I ask them, “What are you doing to close the gap to your goal?” The response, usually, “I’m doing everything I […]
Outsourcing Coaching….
It started as an intriguing call. The VP of Sales called to ask for my help, “I need you to coach my people.” I started asking my normal questions, “What’s going on with them, what are the areas they need the most help in, how is this impacting their performance, what behaviors to you want to see, why is this important to them, why is it important to you…….” I went on, “Are there specific skills you are looking to develop? Is there a specific program or initiative in which you’d like to focus?” The VP of Sales stopped me. […]
The Future Of Sales Is Virtual…..
It seems the pandemic has created a new future for selling. Apparently, it’s virtual. According to so many, we’ve discovered that we can accomplish so much more through Zoom, Teams, Skype or any number of video conferencing platforms. While there will be a need for face to face, it will be the smallest part of the customer engagement process. While these virtual technologies are powerful and will get more powerful, I don’t know that we can define the future of selling as virtual–or that it’s reasonable to define the future of anything in terms of a technology. It’s clear that […]