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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
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 […]
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 […]