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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
Deal Slippage
It’s the end of the month, end of the quarter, end of the year….. I’m looking at the pipelines of several clients (sometimes, I think they regret giving me access to their CRM systems) and I see a flurry of activity. Yes some of it is deals coming in and being closed, but too much of it is slipping the target close date. Move it out a month, a quarter….. I look at the history of some of the deals, one has moved 11 times in the past 11 months, you guessed it, every month the sales person slips the […]
The Purpose Of Selling Is To ………
Complete the sentence, “The purpose of selling is to…….” When I ask sales people and managers that question, the responses vary but generally fit into one of the categories below: …… to make my/our numbers. …… to sell our company’s solutions and products. ….. to achieve our revenue and growth goals. ….. to grow our company. Those are all outcomes of being successful in selling, but what’s absent in each of those perspectives? It’s pretty easy to recognize, it’s the customer. All the responses are very self-centered, focused on what we want to achieve. We take it for granted, but […]
It’s All About Water!
Most of us are fortunate, we don’t have to worry about the basics of life—like potable water. We tend to take it for granted, even wasting too much. Yet finding clean, potable sufficient for daily survival is a problem for over 663 Million people in the world. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Long time readers know that for the past few years I’ve sponsored a campaign with Charity:Water. Over the past years, we’ve raised close to $23K, funding wells in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Southeast Asia. These wells provide water […]
Leveraging Tools To Make Us Better
Over the past week or so, I’ve been on a bit of a rampage on sales and marketing automation tools. Some of my friends in those companies might be thinking, “What’s gotten into you Dave? Why are you turning your back on us?” Others of you may think I’m from the stone ages, and should just crawl back into some cave and be quiet. In reality, I’m really a strong enthusiast and advocate for leveraging automation tools as much as possible. In the hands of great sales people, they have the potential of amplifying capabilities tremendously. We’ve seen sales teams leveraging […]
How Have You Helped Your Customers Improve Their Outcomes?
As we approach the end of the year, there’s always a huge intensity of activity. A lot driven by the various holidays we celebrate, a lot driven by year end (or quarter end), and some driven by preparations for the new fiscal year. It’s easy to lose focus on our customers. But perhaps it’s worth a few minutes to reflect. Perhaps even spending some time in review with them. The key issue is, “How have you helped them improve their outcomes in the past year?” At the core of everything we do, our success is measured less on achieving our […]
Is It The Customer’s Job To See Sales People?
Recently, I read a blog post in which the author was criticizing a procurement professional who had written a post about his experience with sales people. While I didn’t get a chance to see the source post, I get the sense the procurement person took a position that he wanted to see sales people when he wanted, talking about the things he wanted to talk about. Beyond that, he had limited/no interest in engaging with sales person. The author suggested the customer was being irresponsible to themselves and their company by being so selective in seeing sales people. His position was that […]