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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
Starting Over
Sales is one of the few professions where we get to start over in the New Year. Regardless how we did in the previous year, we are now reset to zero. In reality, the concept of starting over in the New Year is more symbolic. The reality is most of what we are doing is a continuation of things that we have been working on for some months. We have or should have robust pipelines that we have been developing over the past months. We should have deals we are working, moving the customer through their buying cycle. Symbolically, we […]
When Prospecting Isn’t Enough!
It seems universal, we don’t have enough in our pipelines, we have to prospect. We have to find more opportunities. But then our prospecting outreach isn’t producing what we need, so we cast a wider net. Where reaching out to 100 prospects no longer works, we bump it up to 200, then 500, then 1000, then….. To meet this need for more, we cast wider nets, we increase volumes and touches. If one email won’t do, then we do two, then three. The average number of touches to get a response is skyrocketing. Years ago, it was 6, then 10, […]
Provide Coaching Or Feedback?
We live in worlds of ever increasing complexity. Somehow, in our attempts to deal with complexity, we seem to seek simplistic answers (There is a huge difference between simplifying and simplistic) The most recent example I’ve run across ans an article posing the issue as Coaching or Feedback, seeking to show which approach was most effective. The reality is rather than treating these issues as “either/or” we need to address them as “both/and.” Coaching and feedback really go hand in hand. Done independently, each can be helpful–as long as we are providing good coaching and effective/impactful feedback. But taken together […]
Confusing Simplification With Simplistic
Both we, our customers, our markets, our worlds are getting more and more complex. We face rapid change/disruption, overwhelm/overload, risk/uncertainty, turmoil, constantly shifting focus/priorities/agendas. In the face of this, we struggle to respond, whether it’s to fix performance problems, address new opportunities, grow and expand. As leaders and business professionals, we must constantly seek to simplify things. Whether it’s helping our customers better understand and address their own challenges and opportunities, or simplifying how things get done within our own organizations. Constant focus on simplification enables us to achieve our goals, as well as increasing our effectiveness and efficiency. But, […]
“Buyer’s Remorse” Grows Up
When I first started selling — way back in the dark ages — one of the things I learned about was “buyer’s remorse.” It was the tendency for customers to start second guessing themselves after they made a decision. Buyer’s remorse was a bit of a challenge. Often, our competitors would try to reverse a decision, raising FUD, suggesting there might be problems, or trying to sweeten their offer. Or they might to raise new issues or talk about other capabilities, “you know this feature and capability might be something you really need…” One of the biggest issues was our […]
Pricing And Discounting Are Different!
As usual, I’ve stuck my nose into some on-line discussions. This time, the discussion started on “creating value,” and devolved into a discussion of discounting. Bob Apollo kicked off the discussion with the premise: Discounting is a sign of failure. It’s something I wholeheartedly agree with. Without meaning to repeat Bob’s post, discounting comes as a result of our inability to get the customer to understand the value that we provide and create. It comes from our inability to differentiate and defend that value in ways meaningful to the customer. It is the result of a failure of execution on […]