Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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.
I had asked a coaching client to put together a 90 day plan, outlining his goals over the next 30-60-90 days. The plan was very thoughtful. He outlined a lot of important activities. As we spoke, I said, “I asked for your goals, but you identified activities. How do you know those activities help you achieve your goals, how do you know if you’ve achieved your goals?” He’s not alone, whether I’m working with the top executives looking at organizational goals/challenges/problems; or sales people improving their results; or coaching individuals; we mistakenly define activities as our goals. Some that current […]
Read MoreIn some recent projects, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze sales conversations. I’ve been tracking conversations sales people are having, from the very first conversation to the closing conversations. We know each conversation is different, they vary from company to company, customer to customer. But listening to enough of them, one starts to notice patterns. Here’s a brief synopsis of how conversations seem to progress through the selling cycle: “Hello, let me tell you about our product, would you be interested in learning more?” “Let me send you links to some case studies and brochures.” “This is more of what […]
Read MoreLet’s try a thought experiment. You will see some of the assumptions are very simplistic, they will become obvious as we move through the thought experiment. They don’t impact the thought experiment. For the moment, suspend your judgement and bear with me. The reason I want you to walk through this is to help you think about what I think is the biggest challenge facing sales leaders in maximizing the performance of their organizations: Talent. By Talent, I mean finding/attracting the right people to our organizations, onboarding them effectively, developing them to both perform and the highest levels possible and […]
Read MoreSocial media channels are dominated by top of the pipeline/funnel thinking. The answer to making your numbers is always more demand gen, lead gen and prospecting. There are battles between pundits on which approach is better. For example the traditional prospecting camp and the social selling camp. In reality, we need to do it all. The message in at least 80% of the articles/books one reads focuses on lead gen, demand gen, and prospecting. Talk to any manager, most will say, “We need more in our pipelines.” But in, How Do You Win, I suggested our thinking was backwards. Rather […]
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