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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
Understanding Customer Pain Points
This morning, I had a conversation with an entrepreneur. He was building the sales capability, scaling the growth of the company. He discussed a problem I hear from too many sales people: “We have great first meetings. We understand the customer pain points, we talk about how our solution can help them…. But after the first meeting, they go dark. When we finally get them to respond, they’ve shifted their focus to the latest crisis….. How do we keep them focused on the issues we discussed?” It’s a common problem. Sales people have great first meetings, but they lose momentum. […]
1+1+1+1=1
I’m a great fan of Ray Dalio’s, Principles. Today, he posted one of his principles: 1+1=3. The principle is that people collaborating effectively can accomplish more together than they can individually. (For those of you that got MBAs in the 80s/90s, the “management speak” of this concept was “synergy.”) When I see high performing organizations, one of the characteristics is this concept of synergy. Great people with great ideas, working together to produce even better ideas and approaches. The process you see in organizations doing this is fascinating. Dalio describes it in the Bridgewater culture. It often is strong willed […]
What About Your Customer’s Customer?
All of our customers have customers of their own, though they may not recognize that. They may be “real customers,” that is people/organizations they sell to. They may be “internal,” customers. For example, functions like finance, operations, HR, IT, all have end customers they must serve within their own organizations. Sometimes, particularly for internal customers, our customers forget about this. I once was speaking to a mid-level IT executive. He was complaining, saying, “Everything would be great if it wasn’t for those stupid end users!” What he failed to recognize is that he wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t […]
“What Problem Is The Customer Trying To Solve?”
Pause for a moment. Look at your qualified pipeline. Start at the bottom. Can you identify the problem the customer is trying to solve? Or the opportunity they are trying to address? I ask this in every deal review I participate in. At least 80% of the time, the response I get is, “They are trying to buy……..” or, “We are selling….” We always tend to define the customer business problems in terms of what we sell, not what the customer is trying to do–whether it’s solving a problem or addressing the opportunity. What we sell is just one thing […]
“Form Triumphs Over Substance”
One book I reread every year is “Excellence, Can We Be Equal And Excellent Too?” by John Gardner. It was published in the early 60’s and is one of the most profound modern philosophy books I’ve read. A mentor recommended it to me, I reread it every year. One line I’ve highlighted is: “Do not let form triumph over substance.” As we kick off a new calendar year, it seems appropriate to revisit this concept. Virtually every sales leader and organization I encounter is doing the things sales leaders and organizations should be doing. There’s the laundry list we all […]
“CRM Compliance”
Talking about CRM is sure to provoke huge amounts of discussion, pro and con, about these tools. First, it’s a huge revenue generation sector for the CRM providers. I’m told it’s roughly $40B/annually. And I’m not certain that includes revenues for all the apps that depend on CRM. Second, in spite of the billions we spend, a friend I trust says there is data showing utilization is around 26%. I don’t know whether those are accurate data points, but I suspect they are pretty close. As a colleague, Kevin Dixon, nets it out, “It seems everyone is paying a lot […]