Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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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
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 […]
Are You Really Differentiated?
We all know the importance of differentiation. If we aren’t differentiated from the alternatives, how does the customer choose? If we can’t create differentiation, price becomes the differentiator. Years ago, the primary differentiator seemed to be our products/solutions. We sought to demonstrate the superiority of our offers by the capabilities we offered in our solutions. But we’ve learned product based differentiation is table stakes. We’ve learned the customer’s all of the alternatives on the customer short list will solve their problems. Of course there are nuances and differences, but too often, these are irrelevant to the customer. We try to […]
Which Sales Methodology?
I’ve gone through training in countless sales methodologies. Our own company has developed and implemented sales methodologies used by thousands of sales people–though all of our work is customized to the strategies, priorities, culture/values of the organizations we work with. Today, I read an article that was a high level assessment of 21 sales methodologies. I admire the author in taking the time. Several things struck me: The approach for most of these, regardless of how politely the suppliers phrase them, tends to be: “Here are the things we do to the customer….” They focused on our selling activities and […]