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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
Are They At 57% Yet?
As a kid, I recall many of our family vacations involved long drives to some place or other. Inevitably, after my sisters and I exhausted the car games we played in the back seat, we’d eventually start whining to Dad, “Are we there yet?” Fast forward to today, I get the sense that too many sales and marketing people adopt the same view about customers, “Are they to 57% yet?” (Hopefully you know, according to CEB, the customer is 57% through their buying process before engaging sales. Depending on whose market research you trust, that figure gets up to 92%). […]
Customer Centricity, A Multi-Legged Stool
Customer centricity has been one of the hot buzzwords for at least the past decade. It’s a shame we’ve made so little real progress in being customer centric. Sure, we put a veneer on it. Our web sites declare we are customer centric-so we must be. Plaques in our corporate headquarters say the same thing-so if it’s written down in corporate headquarters we must be. Yet customers are still frustrated and unhappy–at least that’s what the research and anecdotal evidence shows. We continue to be deluged with marketing materials, sales pitches, endless “Press 4 for customer service” messages. Perhaps we […]
Inside/Outside, Is It Even Relevant Anymore?
Sometimes I wonder about the discussions I hear about Inside versus Outside/Field/Direct sales. I suppose, at one point in time the distinction was relevant. Or at least it reinforced stereotypes of what we thought each was and the value they represent to the organization. In ancient times, when I started selling (the ’80’s), I started as a direct/field sales person. We were the people that “pushed big iron,” we did the multimillion dollar deals. Supposedly, we were out in the field everyday, in customers’ offices doing deals. We tended to think of inside sales as those people sitting in the […]
Doing More By Doing Less
It’s awfully crowded in the digital marketing/social selling world. Getting “heard” is increasingly difficult. Getting into see/talk to customers is one of the top challenges I hear from executives, marketing and sales people alike. To most, the solutions seem to be, “do more,” “be outrageous.” As a result our emails are filled with “provocative/attention grabbing headlines,” that we just ignore and delete. Afterall, with all their marketing automation tools and content expertise, 79% of emails sent by professional marketers have no or limited targeting. We are inundated with messages through every social channel. Content which was supposed to be a […]
Your Most Important Sales Call, What’s Your Plan?
Today, a reader reminded me about something I said in an Openview Partners article about 18 months ago. The article, 20 Of The Best Interview Questions For New Sales Hires, has great ideas from some very thoughtful people. I suggested the following: “Can you show me your plan for this interview?” It’s something I ask all the time, too often, I’m disappointed–they don’t have a plan. Sure, they are answering the questions, usually telling me how great and qualified they are. But very few have a plan for what they want to achieve in the meeting. Let me backtrack a […]
Customers Only See Their Part Of The Problem
In today’s complex B2B world, we know our customers struggle to solve their problems, along the way, perhaps searching for solutions to solve their problem From the Challenger Customer, we know roughly 5.4 people tend to be involved in the process and we know the majority of these initiative end in No Decision Made. As great consultative sales people, we work with each of the 5.4 to identify their needs, priorities, and requirements. We demonstrate how our solution will help address each of those, hopefully convincing them to favor our solution. Again, from the Challenger Customer, we know that doesn’t […]