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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
Knowledge Is Power
Knowledge is power—this has been acknowledged for years. Let’s assume that’s correct. Many people leap from this statement to saying, the customer has all the power in the buying process. After all, they are at least 57% through their buying process, perhaps according to some research they are as much as 90% through the process before they even get sales involved. They’ve done their digital research and education, they’ve narrowed their selection down to a short list of about 3 alternatives. They have self educated and have “knowledge” of their requirements and the ability of the solution to meet their […]
Not Every Call You Make Is A Sale
Recently, reading an article, I was struck by a sentence, “Not every call you make is a sale.” It leapt out of the page, somehow it seems obvious. Yet too often, it seems we behave just the opposite. The very first emails, set the tone–they are some variant of, “Let me tell you why you should buy my product.” Every subsequent outreach, whether by email, telephone, or face to face is about the product or solution. Many cast a very wide net, not knowing what the who the prospect is, what they do, or if there is even a fit. […]
Managers With Personal Territories
Are you a Front Line Sales Manager? Do you still have a personal territory with a quota for that territory? In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten into a number of discussions about this topic. Unfortunately, too many managers are in this position–it’s untenable. Think for a moment, each of these jobs are very different. The job of a high performing sales person, an individual contributor requires focus and full time dedication. Likewise, the job of a front line sales manager requires focus and full-time dedication. Given this, how do we think a person can be successful doing both […]
Account Based Everything — Structured Prospecting
Account Based Everything, including Account Based Marketing and Account Based Selling is all the rage. Sometimes, however, I think we make all of this a little more complicated than necessary. Most of what we do in territory development and management applies to what we do in ABE. We just have the ability to focus, personalize, and leverage an incumbent position. The most fundamental aspect of ABE is that it provides a structured approach to prospecting. In our accounts, just as in our territories, mindset matters. We have to approach ABE with the mindset that “It’s our God given right to […]
It’s Not About What Your Product Does….
Everyday, I speak with sales people who are struggling. They’ve got a rock solid deal, the customer is qualified and interested. These sales people are eager to educate the customer about their products–and customers are at the point in their buying cycles where they want to be educated. But somehow deals become stalled. Conversations continue, but things don’t move forward. As I review the deals with sales people, trying to figure out how to break them loose, a common theme keeps coming up. The conversations are all focusing on what the product does. That is, the focus is on product […]
Using What You Sell……
Recently, a good friend, who’s a senior manager in a Sales Automation Tools company, asked me for help. When he posed his request, I was puzzled, I responded, “John (that’s not John’s real name), isn’t that what your solution is supposed to help your customers do?” While it seems obvious, that was a bit of an “Aha” moment for John. Before, I go further, John is really an outstanding executive and his company has truly outstanding tools. But the simple question I had asked got John to thinking more deeply. While the solution his team sells is very broad in […]