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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
Your Marketing Is Driving Me Away!
Every day, I receive somewhere between 150-200 emails–“valid emails,” not the hundreds that flow directly into my junk mail folder. About 50% of them are client/colleague communications, emails about something I have a direct interest in, or are directly work related messages. Things important to what I’m working on and my company. About 50% of them are prospecting or other marketing communications emails. Translated, that means people and companies are trying to reach out and “touch” me about 75-100 times every day (Yuck, maybe I need a bigger bottle of Purell on my desk). It’s overwhelming! When I take the […]
Prescription, The Double Edged Sword
Being prescriptive with our sales teams and our customers is a hot topic these days. Prescription, done well, can be very powerful. It helps focus us on the most effective ways to achieve our goals and objectives. Prescription enables us to leverage our past experience, learning what’s most effectively, constantly refining, and tuning it to improve the results we achieve. It helps us leverage best practice or experience across the organization, driving higher levels of performance and greater consistency in execution. It’ very helpful with buyers. They struggle with identifying the most critical things they must be doing opportunity-solving, including […]
The Looming Implosion Of Sales/Marketing Automation Apps
The other day, I was sitting in the airport and had a few idle minutes. For some reason, I started playing with my IPhone. I started moving some of the apps around to make them easier to find, based on my utilization. Business, Social Media, Conferencing, and Travel on the first page. Mapping, “Yelp-like,” and my fitness apps on the second. News, Reading, Entertainment, Music apps on the third. Camera/Photo and miscellaneous apps on the fourth. At some point I looked at the number of apps on my phone–215. I was blown away. I had no idea I had so […]
But They Really Need The Product!
I was doing a deal review with a sales person. It was a big deal, important to the sales person and to my client. But the deal had been stuck for some time. As I reviewed the deal history, there were a bunch of things “wrong” with the deal. When it originally, was put into the system, it had a projected close date that was unusually fast. Both because of the very short sales cycle and the size of the deal, it caught management’s attention. Everyone was ecstatic. Then it slipped, and it slipped, and it slipped. In the past […]
What’s The Problem With Demos
Demos Sell! I was visiting a company recently, they had a full court press on doing demos. People were measured on the number of demos they were doing, they had created a contest around who did the most demos, they had banners and buttons around the Demos Sell theme. There was a problem—which was the reason I was visiting the company. Clearly, the sales people were selling demos, but they weren’t getting PO’s. I asked to sit in a couple of the demos to see what was happening. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to see the demo. My […]
Is Selling SaaS Solutions Different From Other B2B Solutions?
Is selling SaaS solutions different than selling other complex B2B solutions? Certainly, the business model and revenue stream looks different. Rather than making money in a single transaction, the revenue stream is spread over the period of a subscription. As a result, customer retention and renewals become critical in order to maintain the revenue stream. But how different is it really? As we discover in this discussion with Chris Palmisano, the fundamentals remain the same. I couldn’t think of anyone better to discuss this topic than Chris Palmisano. Chris is current Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Business Development at […]