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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
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” An Analysis
For the past month, I’ve been publishing stories on “Why I’m So Interested In Selling.” The group is fascinating–both in their stories and in their diversity. Some have had long careers in selling, some are relatively new. Some are or have been senior executives in very large companies, some are individual contributors. They come from all over the world, they represent B2B, technology , basic materials, SaaS, industrial products, professional services, B2B2C and B2C. So far, I have 51 stories (not all have been published yet). I will probably cap this at about 100 stories. But I wanted to do […]
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Martin Mackay
Preface: I’ve been introduced to Martin Mackay through my friend Bob Apollo. As you will see, Martin has a fascinating and rich career an selling. Martin articulates something that I think so many of us find so exciting about selling: “The main reason is that it challenges you to reinvent yourself and stay current with your knowledge because it is the most dynamic industry of all. So it remains stimulating and exciting after many years. Within that, Sales is the most dynamic and challenging role and the combination is really without precedent.” Thanks for sharing your story Martin! How I […]
Shortcuts Are Seldom Short…..
We invest enormous amounts of energy seeking to avoid dong the work. We constantly seek shortcuts, things that enable us to avoid doing the work critical to creating and sustaining performance. Our mindsets aren’t so focused on improving efficiency, rather on avoiding doing the work. We scour social channels for shortcuts; what are the easiest ways to prospect, how can I send more emails/make more calls, how do I close more deals with less effort, how do I leverage tools like ChatGPT to do the work for me, and on and on……..? We constantly experiment with different shortcuts, trying to […]
“Start With The End In Mind,” Our Disconnect With Customers…..
Habit 2 of Stephen Covey’s famous, “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People,” is “Start (Begin) with the end in mind.” Covey writes about the importance of having a destination or a goal, Knowing what we are trying to achieve forces us to focus on the things critical to achieving the goal. Without this, we wander aimlessly, perhaps without understanding what we are trying to achieve. But, as we work in organizations and work with our customers, sometimes this can be the source of a giant disconnect. For example, as sellers, our focus is on closing a deal. We orient […]
Price, Cost, Value Propositions, Value Realization, Value Creation……
“Value” is a critical concept in everything we do, but particularly when we are engaging customers, hoping to present a solution they will buy. Yet too often, we and our customers misunderstand the elements around “value,” as a result, we fail to leverage value to it’s greatest impact. Most of the time, we and our customers think of value in terms of the price/cost. We present a solution, we define the price, the customer evaluates it against alternatives and it’s budget, then chooses to go forward or to do something else. In presenting our value this way, we usually defend […]
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Alex McNaughten
Preface: Alex McNaughten, his co-founder, and I have been spending a lot of time talking recently. Alex and Alistair have a vision for one of the best AI based coaching platforms I’ve seen, Grw.ai. Alex’s story is fascinating, but one of the things Alex raises is similar to what many other participants have also raised, and what drove me to begin this series. He writes, “The (sales) profession is not in great shape……. This is the reason I am still in sales-I am determined to fix it! “Why I am so interested in selling,” Alex McNaughten I started in sales […]