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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
Do Our Discovery Questions Really Allow Us To Do That?
The discovery part of the buying and selling proceesses are, perhaps, the most important part of the process. It is a huge amount of the shared learning process we start with our customers. But, do we really “discover,” in this process, or are we just seeking confirmation for what we want to hear? Too often, our discovery questions are highly scripted to get us to learn the things we need to know to better sell? First, we ask a series of questions to qualify, nominally, the opportunity. We only want to know one thing, “Is this a good fit for […]
Does Your Customer Understand Their “Why?”
When we engage our customers in discussing opportunities, we know it’s critical to understand “why.” Why are they considering making a change? Why now? What are the consequences of doing nothing? What are they trying to achieve? Why is this important to you and the organization? We are much more effective when we understand what’s driving the customer and we align our strategies around helping the customer navigate the change initiative. We ground everything we do in helping them better understand and address their “why.” But often, particularly in complex B2B buying journeys, the customer loses track of their why–or […]
“Let’s Partner!”
“Let’s partner,” or many variations on the theme appear in a large number of the LinkedIn and email communications I receive. We all know that’s just another term for “I’d like to sell you something.” Perhaps it’s my sadistic nature, but every once in a while, toying with someone who sends a particularly strongly worded “partnering” message, I often respond, “It would be great to partner. Can we schedule a conversation about how we have helped organizations like yours improve results?” The responses are hilarious. One person actually said, “You don’t understand, I’m trying to sell you something! I’m not […]
Don’t Get Distracted By What You Sell!
I was having a conversation with a very good sales person. We were speaking about a very competitive, difficult deal. The conversation started with “value.” I asked questions about what the customer was trying to do, the results they expected, and the business impact. The sales person answered some of my questions about what the customer was trying to do—-but the conversation started getting diverted. He started talking about what he was selling–and what he thought the customer was buying. Then he started talking about pricing strategy–both in terms of what they would be proposing to the customer, their reaction […]
What 95% Of Meetings Miss
I spend much of my time in meetings with clients and their customers. Since the pandemic, it seems I have more meetings on my calendar, starting early in the morning running into the afternoon. I know we are supposed to complain about how much time we waste in meetings, frankly that’s not my experience. One, I insist on an agenda, if I’m to participate. Two, I prepare for each meeting and expect everyone to be as prepared as I am. So most of the meetings I attend are pretty good. (Part of it may be that my clients are typically […]
Thinking About Diversity And Inclusion
Recently, the NY Times had a fascinating article: “Faces Of Power, 80% Are White As The Country Gets More Diverse.” There were a couple of interesting data points, of the 25 highest value publicly traded companies in the US, only 6 were people of color, none were women. In the Fortune 500, there are only 4 black CEOs. We have long known that we have a diversity/inclusion problem in our country. Business is no different, if one looks at the top 20% of managerial jobs in most corporations, they are dominated by white males. Many organizations are very imbalanced in […]