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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
Sales—Science Or Art?
Recently, I read an article about sales being more science than art. Perhaps, I was a little unfair in my comments, but the author’s premises were flawed. I think we want to see sales being more like science because of what we perceive as the predictability and certainty that seems to exist in science. We want to be able to say, “If this……then that…..,” applying rigorous formulas that drive our success. Books and thousands of articles focus on creating rigid structures and formulas that create predictable success. For example, in the referenced article, the author used the example, “Water always […]
“Customer Propensity To Buy”
For those people deep into analytics and understanding (usually) consumer buying behaviors, the concept of Propensity To Buy, is not new. It’s been around for decades. Propensity to buy is simply about determining the liklihood of a customer buying something. We use it in developing our websites, our web ad strategies, our marketing programs, and all sorts of things. The goal is to identify that moment and set of conditions (product, place, price) that a customer is most likely to buy. While the propellerheads, try to develop propensity to buy models with 5 decimal points of accuracy, this concept is […]
Great Selling Is “Habit Forming!”
I’m sure you’ve experienced something that gives you a “rush.” It’s when, all of a sudden, everything just falls into place, everything is working as it should, it seems effortless. Sometimes we experience it in sports. For example, when I’m riding, I get it a groove, I’m in a paceline, my pedal stroke is perfect, I’m being pulled by the rider in front of me or pulling the riders behind me. It’s a perfect feeling. Alternatively, it’s when everything comes together for the perfect golf stroke, everything seems effortless and the ball goes just where you intended it (I have […]
Do We Know How To Do “Needs Discovery/Analysis?”
My good friend, Brian MacIver, reminded me of the struggle sales people have in doing “Needs Analysis.” I suspect there are a lot of reasons. Much is simply the fact that “we” typically get involved in the customer buying process very late. Most data is now showing customers may be 70% or more through their buying process before they first involve sales. By that time, they have completed (or think they have) their needs analysis, and are moving to selecting a solution. “We,” naturally like that because we get to talk about our products, our companies, ourselves. It’s what we’ve […]
Begin With The End In Mind
Stephen Covey’s famous 2nd Habit is: “Begin with the end in mind!” It’s great advice for most things, but stunning advice as we think about our deal/opportunity strategies. Sadly, too few sales people leverage this habit/principle effectively. The immediate reaction to this will be, “Dave, you’re crazy, sales people always do this, they are focused on getting the order and producing results!” I get it, but, based on too many behaviors I see in sales people, it’s not clear to me they really understand what this means or that they are effectively executing it. Let me do a deeper dive […]
How Do We Improve Forecast Accuracy?
Yesterday, I wrote, Forecast Accuracy, Again. It’s an important foundation to this article. It focuses on why we need forecast accuracy, which may be different from what most sales leaders think. I’ve actually become very accurate forecasting when and how this topic comes up. There are two peak periods. The first is about now, midway through the second quarter. This happens because people may have struggled to make their numbers in the first quarter, they are midway through the second quarter, looking forward, seeing both the quarter and the year at risk. Jumping on the topic in the middle of […]