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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
Selling IS A Service
It seems the world is migrating to an “As A Service” model. Everyday one hears a new (sometimes not so new) XaaS approach. The model, at least as a subscription payment approach, is not new. We’ve had various subscription, rent, lease capabilities for at least decades, if not centuries. The application of this model to different areas, is interesting. Then there’s the SaaS selling model–not applied strictly to Software (cloud or otherwise) that seems to be all the rage. This is typically a high volume/high velocity approach to selling, focused primarily on transactionalizing and optimizing our selling approach, despite what […]
Stop Focusing On The Top Of The Pipeline!
Virtually every sales person and organization have pipeline/funnel problems. Almost all the time, they are anemic. Virtually every pipeline has quality and integrity issues. Likewise, there are too many velocity issues. It seems the universal, go to, solution for bad pipelines is to find more qualified opportunities. That is, we need to focus at the top. We need to focus on prospecting, we need to develop and qualify new opportunities. 80% of the experts, the majority of blogs, say the same thing. Post after post, including many I’ve written, will pummel you with prospect, prospect, prospect! Google “prospecting” and you […]
Product Centric Selling, It Really Is About Us!
I’ve been having an email conversation with a colleague about, “Why are sales people so product focused in their sales outreach?” We all know, at least I hope we do, that focusing on the customer, their issues/opportunities, and how we help them achieve their goals, is much more effective than pitching our products. Yet, why do so many organizations fail to do this? Why do we still see so many sales strategies dominated by, “It’s really about me, my product, and achieving my goals?” First, the reality, which people like me sometimes tend to gloss over too superficially, is that […]
Do We Even Need Sales People Anymore
Recently, I read a post from a marketing person I really respect. This person was asking the question and making the argument that perhaps we need to rethink selling, perhaps eliminate it. He’s a thoughtful person, so I paid attention to what he was saying. Fundamentally, he built an his argument off two items. The old Peter Drucker quote, “The aim or marketing is to make selling superfluous,” and Tesla’s recent announcement that it would move all sales online. In the end, he admittedly paints and idealized world of marketing, suggesting if your marketing is working well in creating demand, […]
Driven By Distraction
Friday mornings are usually “Coaching” days. I have a number of standing calls scheduled with coaching clients. This morning, there was a call with “Bob.” At the appointed time, I called Bob, he picks up saying, “Hi, Dave…” “Bob, what should we focus on ……..” I started. Bob, “Excuse me a moment, I’ve just got to take this call, I am double booked.” “Don’t worry, call me back when you are ready for this meeting,” I respond. A few minutes later, Bob calls, he is appropriately apologetic, I am appropriately empathetic, I ask, “What should we focus on today?” “Dave, […]
A Paradox, The Sales Process And The Buying Journey
As sales professionals we face an intriguing paradox. We know, for complex B2B buying, the buyer’s journey can best be described as chaotic. What we have always believed is a linear process–identify a challenge, commit to change, define the problem/needs, evaluate alternatives, select a solution, turns out to be chaotic, as illustrated by the picture below At the same time, we have a relatively linear sales process: prospect, qualify, discover, propose, close. A sales process is critical for our success. It enables us to focus on the right opportunities. It provides a framework for the things we must do, with […]