Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
“Do Sales People Make A Difference?”
Steve Burton posed an interesting question on LinkedIn: When a large ticket item 500k + is purchased in a B2B transaction how much of it so you think is down to the salesperson’s skill ? If we analyzed some these deals would the majority just be down to the buyer putting the 3 most well known options on the table and picking the most sensibly priced deal with the simplest on boarding ? My knee jerk reaction was, “Well of course!” But as I thought about it, I revised my position: Top performers always make a difference, but not only […]
Sales Quotas, A Thing Of The Past?
Recently read a provocative post declaring “Sales Quotas A Thing Of The Past!” For the most part, the article was a tutorial on pipeline metrics and a diatribe against much of the quota setting process. I don’t disagree with a large part of the article. Much of the way sales quotas and goals are set is wrong. Too often, we see manager setting goals that are arbitrary or not based on sound analysis. This isn’t just the quota, but it’s a majority of metrics that sales people are subjected to, including meaningless call metrics, activity metrics, pipeline coverage metrics–all that […]
It’s Not The SDRs’ Fault!
It seems that SDR/BDRs are bearing more than their fair share of blame and frustration from their targets. Yes, I’ve whined about them many times in my blog and on LinkedIn. I’ve thinly disguised the lamest emails and recounted misguided conversations I’ve had with these poor sales people. SDR bashing and shaming has become one of the latest “sports” in social media. People with too much time on their hands and too little empathy are lashing out, naming names. Ironically, most of these people would never have the courage to pick up the phone and do what SDRs do. Don’t […]
What About Sales Person Retention?
Retention is a hot topic–customer retention that is. We’ve all seen data around customer acquisition costs. Basically, the cost of acquiring new customers is several time higher than the cost of retaining and growing existing customers. The whole subscription model, on which all SaaS and XaaS companies are built has customer retention as a fundamental to the success of the business model. All the discussion around ABM/ABS/ABE is focused on retaining and growing our most important accounts. Makes sense! But how come we don’t see similar focus on Sales Person Retention? A recent study from Glassdoor, shows on average, an […]
Complacency
I struggled with the title of this post, wanting something more eye catching, provocative, perhaps a little less negative. Complacency is an ugly word. No one likes to be accused of being complacent. Complacency is sometimes associated with laziness, though some of the most complacent organizations I encounter are far from “lazy,” but “crazy-busy” with activity. Reflecting for a few moments, I don’t think any individual or company sets out to be complacent. Instead, we are seduced into complacency. Ironically, the greatest seductress for complacency is success! When we are successful, we want to keep going. We keep doing what […]
“A Sales Person By Any Other Name Is Still A ……..”
In Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says: “What is in a name? That which we call a rose…By any other name, would smell as sweet” Which brings me to the discussion I hear too often, “What if we called sales people something other than a sales person?” We see it every day with the proliferation of terms we use for sales people: Relationship managers, Trusted advisors, Account managers, Territory managers, Business developers, Retention managers, SDR, BDR, Business development consultant, Solutions advisors, Customer service reps (Yes, there are those that do provide service and others that […]