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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
Closing The Sale
Earlier today, I was interviewed for an article on “Closing The Sale.” The article is in a publication focused on small business owners. As we concluded the conversation, the interviewer said, “Your answers were completely different than I expected.” I think too many of us–entrepreneurs and sales people, alike, have mistaken impressions of closing the sale. As a result, we close far fewer deals than we might. Leveraging (and paraphrasing) Adriana’s questions, I thought I’d refresh your thinking about closing the sale. What are the key components that lead up to closing any sale? Implicitly, this question focuses on the final […]
Understanding Power And Influence
One of the core issues in understanding and influencing our customers’ buying processes is to make sure we are working with the right people, doing the right things at the right time. Traditional wisdom says, “Work with the decision-maker!” Sometimes that manifested itself with further wisdom, “Call at the top.” The thinking being reaching high up the food chain, getting the right C-Level executive who will make the decision for us, stuffing it down on the organization. In reality it seldom works that way. Smart executives know that stuffing something into the organization is a sure route to failure. They […]
What Have You Done Lately?
Sales is the only job where the scorecard on performance is reset at the beginning of every month, quarter, year. In so many other roles, what you have been doing rolls over to what you continue to do, or what you need to be doing in the future. But Sales is different. Regardless how well you performed last month, on the first of each month, everybody is reset to zero. The top performers, mid-range performers, poor performers all have the same scorecard, they start in the same place with $0 and a goal to make for the month. We may, […]
“A Butterfly Lands On A Leaf In A Brazilian Rainforest…….”
I have to beg your indulgence on this article. It’s an article about predictive and proscriptive analytics. Part of my reason is having just returned from Dreamforce 2015, as you would guess, a lot of the sessions talked about analytics. Part of the reason for this post was driven by a thoughtful question from Anthony on my “Who Should We Be Talking To,” Post. It also ties to my “The Intersection Of Seth Godin And Challenger/Insight Selling” Post. I know you are looking at the title of this post, thinking, “Dave, here you go again on one of those esoteric […]
The Challenger Customer
Several months ago, my friends at the CEB sent me a review copy of The Challenger Customer. Just reading the title, I expected an epic confrontation between Challenger Sales and Challenger Customers—perhaps a worthy follow up to the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight. I had images of challenger sales people and challenger customers squaring off with each other. Instead, they started at a different place–perhaps where they should have started in the first place. They start with the customer (whenever we talk about sales or marketing, it’s always useful to start at with the customer). As usual, the book is filled with compelling […]
Critical Selling Skills That Distinguish Top Performers
Last week, Tim Ohai and I were talking about the future of selling. We got onto a discussion of the critical skills needed for high performers. I’ve continued to think about this over the past few days. I’ve narrowed things down to the top 3 skills critical for top performers. I’d like your take on it, because most sales training programs don’t seem to include these. First, all the usual traditional skills are table stakes. You must master the “advanced,” methodologies currently on the market: Product knowledge, business acumen, customer/industry/market knowledge, financial knowledge, consultative/insight/solutions/value based/customer focused/challenger and related programs. You […]