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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
Wishful Thinking
Over the past weeks, I’ve been participating in a number of quarterly reviews–sales people presenting to their managers, regional vice presidents reporting to the CSO, EVP’s and GM’s presenting to the CEO. A part of each of these reviews is the outlook for this quarter and the rest of the year. Most are OK, maybe not great, but you can see a way for them to get to the goals they are trying to achieve. But every once in a while, there are some beautiful works of science fiction or wishful thinking. It’s usually from a person who has badly […]
Don’t Disadvantage Yourself In Your Deal Strategy
You’ve invested time in qualifying your deal. Now you want to move the customer through their buying process–maximizing your ability to win when they make a decision. At this point, it’s critical to build a strong deal strategy. Without this, you’re lost. But I’m amazed at how bad most people’s deal strategies are. They don’t understand the customer, both the organization and the individuals involved. They focus on their products and solutions, trying to demonstrate superiority over competition. They haven’t taken the time to research, question, probe the customer. What’s driving the need to change? How did they get to this place? […]
High Velocity Prospecting
I’m a huge fan of high velocity outbound calls — at least when done well. Recently, I needed to buy a new car, my current car was coming off lease, I thought I’d take advantage of some of the end of quarter promotions. I did my research, narrowed down to a couple of different models, configured those models at the manufacturer’s sites (Build Your Car) to get an idea of pricing. I researched the various sites to find the promotions, deals, discounts I might get for the vehicles I was considering. Finally, I made some internet queries to a few dealerships suggested as […]
Inbound Works—Until It Doesn’t
I’m a great fan of inbound marketing/demand gen approaches. What sales person wouldn’t be? It’s great to be able to talk to someone who actually is interested in your products and services! Before the first conversation, you have a context of their interests. You know marketing programs they’ve responded to, you know the content, which provides an indication of their interest. If you do your homework, quickly researching them and their company, you can engage them in meaningful conversations about their problems and challenges. Some will have a need to buy, we qualify them move them into the pipeline and […]
Complex Or Simple Buying Process
Over the past few months, I’ve been reviewing a lot of my thinking about business to business buying and selling processes, and how we achieve success in both. I’m not sure I’ve changed any of my position, but perhaps clarified some of my thinking. Hope you don’t mind my “thinking aloud.” First, probably some definitions are in order, so we are at least on the same page. When I refer to the complex buying process, or the complex selling process, it’s typically one involving many people in the decision-making process, typically a consensus driven decision by the “5.4” or however […]
Rethinking The Sales Organization
In the “old days” the structure of the sales organization was pretty simple. Hire a bunch of people, give them territories with goals and turn them loose to sell. There were variations of that theme, sometimes we used indirect sales organizations, like manufacturer’s reps, resellers, channel partners, and others to sell for us. Sometimes all the selling was done over the phone. Sometimes the territory was geographically defined, sometimes it was industry/segment defined, sometimes it was defined by accounts. But the model was pretty simple. A sales person had a territory and was responsible for selling all the company’s products […]