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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
What Do You Do For Your Customers, Not What Do You Do!
The moon must be in a certain phase. All the prospecting calls I’ve been getting have been the same. After introductions, they immediately launch into, “Here’s what we do…….” I’d let the sales person finish his pitch, then reply, “I understand what your company does, but what can your company do for me and my company?” 100% of the time (OK, the sample size was about 5 calls), the response was, “Here’s what we do….” I’d repeat my question, and they’d repeat the same answer. As I reflected on the calls, I realized they aren’t too unusual. I reflected on […]
Customers And Sales, We Need Each Other!
If I were to assess the worlds of buying and selling through much of what I read, I would come up with the conclusion that Customers and Sales people are on diverging paths, we are doing as much to minimize our interactions with each other. The Holy Grail of these diverging paths is AI–from a buyers perspective, helping us buy efficiently and intelligently. From a sellers perspective helping us sell more efficiently. Someday buyers and sellers will have their bots talking with each other, freeing human beings from the process of buying and selling. Survey after survey discuss buyer dissatisfaction […]
“Fixing The Compensation Problem…..”
I always worry when a conversation with a sales executive starts with, “We need to fix our compensation problem.” The ensuing discussion usually focuses on, “We aren’t meeting our numbers, we need to fix the compensation/commission system in order to make our numbers.” At this point in the conversation, there is an uncomfortable back and forth: Me: “Why do you think your compensation structure is the problem in achieving your numbers?” With relatively naive managers, the response is, “Well sales people are coin operated, if we want them to change what they are doing, we just need to adjust the […]
Doing Less With More!
It’s become trite to say “sales has changed more in the past 5 years than in all preceding history.” Indulge me with leveraging this trite phrase. Usually, I look at these issues from the customer point of view, knowing that much of what has changed about sales has been a result of the changing buyers. Permit me to look internally only, let’s look within our own organizations and within our profession. Let’s look at some of the things that have happened: Content is king: Billions are invested in content development–much focused directly on customers, creating awareness, driving interest, creating demand, […]
Why I Won’t Invest Time In You!
I get deluged with emails and calls asking me for a short phone conversation. Here’s how one stated today: Hi there – Just read your post. [Body of pitch selling me something.] More details below. Hope to hear back from you soon. Thanks, [Name deleted to spare this person the shame of being called out for cluelessness] I was actually mildly interested in what this guy was offering, but then decided to ignore the email. As I reflected on the note, he hadn’t taken the time to address the note to me personally. Clearly, he’s targeting bloggers, mentioning interests in […]
Making B2B More Like B2C Sales???
I read a terrific article by Tiffani Bova, “6 Tips For Selling In The Age Of The Connected Consumer.” There’s a lot I agree with, but one point stood out, Make B2B More Like B2C. I don’t disagree, in fact, there are huge amounts we can learn from B2C, particularly in the areas of personalization, customer experience, and ease of doing business. We also see many of the trends in B2C leading B2B. For example, B2C customers have leveraged digital channels in far more powerful ways than in B2B, but B2B is slowly emulating many of the practices (just read […]