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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
The Tragedy Of “No Decision Made”
Depending on the research you read and believe, the number of buying journeys ending in “No Decision Made,” is around 50-60%. Think about what that means. Sure, we’re disappointed–it’s a lost opportunity for us. We may have invested a lot of time, resource, and energy in competing to win the decision from the customer buying team. But the real tragedy is the lost opportunity for the customer. The tragedy of “No Decision Made,” is the customer has failed to achieve their goal. They have failed to solve their problem. They are missing opportunities they sought to attack. Think about what […]
When The Customer Doesn’t Respond The Way You Want Them To
This afternoon, the phone rang, I picked it up, “Hi, this is Dave Brock.” Clearly, there was a sales person on the line, she said, “May I please speak to Dave?” (You can see this call going south already.) When I responded it was me, without taking a breath, she launched into a 97 second pitch. I tried to interrupt, but she wouldn’t have any of that. At the end of the pitch, again without taking a breath, she asked, “Can I schedule a meeting and demo?” My response was, “No.” Without, a pause, she went for her alternate close. […]
What Your Customer Doesn’t Know Can Kill Them!
There are few industries in the world that aren’t being disrupted in some fashion. Existing competition doing new things, new entrants with different business models, shifting technologies, global competition, business and digital transformation, industry/market changes, and continually shifting customer needs all impact our customers and their abilities to grow and succeed. Sometimes our customers recognize these–or even may be driving the change. They look at their businesses differently, they explore new opportunities and consider new strategies. As they examine what it takes to exploit these new opportunities and execute the new strategies, inevitably they are driving change initiatives in their […]
There Are No Silver Bullets!
It seems every day I encounter someone looking for a silver bullet: “How do I get my prospect to see me, what’s the one thing/trick/technique you recommend that causes prospects to want to meet?” “What is the best technique to overcome objections?” “What is the way I can get my customer to select our solution?” “What is the latest technology that will cause our team to consistently hit their numbers?” “How do I make sure I hire only A players?” The list goes on endlessly. Inevitably, people asking these questions find what they think is a silver bullet. Clearly, it’s […]
Design Your Sales Calls For Success
Some years ago, we did research on the effectiveness of sales calls and meetings. We focused primarily on meeting on qualified opportunities, not prospecting calls. The results were shocking, though not surprising. We found sales people tended to make 30-50% more calls than necessary to close. I suspect the that number is far larger today. In trying to understand this, broadly, it came down to two reasons: Poor or nonexistent call planning, poor execution. To do a quick self audit, think of all the sales calls or meetings you’ve had on qualified opportunities in the past 2-3 weeks. Ask yourself […]
Not Everyone’s A Customer Or A Prospect!
It might seem obvious to everyone reading the title of this post. Of course we know that not everyone is a prospect or a potential customer. One would never guess that is common knowledge based on emails and phone calls I receive. I reflect on the emails and calls, astounded, thinking, “Why do they possibly think I might be interested in a conversation or that I could even be a prospect for their solutions?” Recently, I was speaking with the top sales executive of a very large firm. He was relatively new to the organization and was very frustrated. We […]