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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
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 […]
Developing Management And Leadership Talent
I recently wrote, “The Sales Manager’s Job Is Different,” addressing the impact of making the wrong decisions in selecting Front Line Sales Managers (FLSM). Too often, the “easy” solution is to take our very best sales people, promoting them into FLSM roles. Usually the results are devastating, they may be great sales people, but they don’t recognize the FLSM job is different. One of the primary reasons people do this is because they think it’s easier and faster to take someone internally, moving them into the leadership role. After all, that individual already knows our company, our products, our customers. […]
Embracing Objections
I just saw the term, “Objection free selling.” In fairness to the person raising the issue, I didn’t read the article, so I’m not certain the premise or his position. It was the phrase that caught my attention, making me flashback on my own history of dealing with objections. At one point, I feared them. I did everything I could to avoid them. I’d prepare, I’d anticipate questions and concerns. When the inevitable happened, when the customer raised an objection, I thought I had failed. Somehow the act of raising an objection meant that I hadn’t convinced them, that they […]
The Sales Manager’s Job Is Different
The front line sales manager (FLSM) has, possibly, the single most difficult and important job in the sales organization. FLSMs are responsible for translating the strategies and priorities of the organization into execution by their teams. Through their teams, they are responsible for millions to tens of millions in revenue. Given the importance of this role, I’m constantly amazed at how casually many organizations are in hiring and onboarding sales managers. The cost of a bad manager is devastating. Think for a moment about the implications of a bad manager: Managers are responsible for maximizing performance of everyone in […]