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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
Understanding Customer Needs
I was listening to a “discovery call.” It wasn’t much different than any other discovery call I’ve listened to. The sales person was asking the customer about their needs. As I listened to the questions, it struck me, the majority of the questions really weren’t about the customer’s needs but really about the product or solution. They went like this: What are you looking for in a [Insert whatever category you sell–e.g. Sales Automation, Marketing Automation, Financial Systems, Machine Tool, New Building] solution? What features and capabilities are important to you in that solution? And perhaps there was the drill […]
Is Leadership Really About This?
I was stunned reading an article in Fast Company: Five CEOs On The Skills It Takes To Land The Corner Office. The skills they identified were: How to say “No.” How to pitch. How to read financials. How to take criticism. Knowing how the work gets done. It’s amazing there was virtually no mention about effective leadership–that is caring about your people, inspiring them through a great vision, reinforcing it through a great culture, creating ownership and alignment in the organization, and helping each perform at the highest levels possible. Business is about people. No top leader is ever responsible for […]
I’m Really Confused About Account Based Marketing
Account Based Marketing/Selling—“Account Based Everything” is all the rage right now. Some very smart colleagues, including Craig Rosenberg and Matt Heinz are real leaders in helping organizations develop and implement their Account Based Marketing Strategies. But despite all that I read, I’m really confused. Perhaps you can set me straight. Target the right accounts. I understand that we want to identify and target the right accounts. These seem to be the accounts that have the problems that we are expert at solving with our products and solutions. Target the right people within the accounts (personas). I’ve learned that we have […]
Transforming To A “Customer First” Sales Organization
We know that we are supposed to be customer focused, but too many organizations struggle with actually becoming customer focused. For most, it requires a transformation in the way you do business. Re-examining everything you do, engaging customers in those critical conversations that put the customer first is critical for to driving these transformations. Often it requires organizations to rethink everything they do. Who they sell to, how they engage the customer, is the current deployment model even the most appropriate model? Unify has been on this journey for the past 2 years. It started with a commitment from the […]
How Much Do You Care?
Sales success isn’t so much about selling skills, techniques and approaches. It’s not so much about product knowledge or even knowledge about your customers. It isn’t about the tools we use, how we are engaging socially. While all these things are important and necessary to our success as sales professionals and leaders, fundamentally, success in sales is about caring. Think about it, as sales people we are fundamentally looking for opportunities, trying to convince people about how to change–when they don’t necessarily know they should or even may not want to. It’s overcoming resistance or even indifference, whether it’s our […]
Helping Your Buyers Look Beyond Themselves!
We know we need to be customer focused. We know that we are most effective when we focus less on what we sell, but how we help the customer with their opportunities and challenges. For many, just this shift in focus, moving from internal focus on pitching products, to focusing on the customer is a huge challenge. But the reality is, we and our buyers, need a larger perspective. We and they have to look beyond themselves, if they are to succeed with their initiatives for change. Helping our customers look beyond themselves, the problems they are trying to solve, […]