Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Prospecting—Sweaty Palms And Picking Up The Phone!
Last week I was having a conversation with an executive. This executive had an incredible background. He had built and sold several very successful start-ups. You would recognize their names. Currently he served on the boards of several large companies, was involved in another great start-up, was part of a venture company. This individual has just an awesome background, filled with success–and is just wickedly smart. Somehow, we got onto the topic of prospecting. I was describing a prospecting call I had recently made. Laughing as I described the situation, I talked about preparing for a call on a very senior […]
Whose Performance Problem Is It?
A while back I was involved in a discussion about performance. For some reason, a specific individual had drawn the attention and ire of a top executive—rather an account that individual was responsible for was drawing the ire of the executive. The issue was real, the account–a major channel partner–wasn’t performing, in fact it was creating problems for my client. It’s reasonable to hold the sales person accountable for addressing this issue. The sales person may have needed support in addressing the issue, but it is the sales person’s responsibility to manage the relationship, manage the shared expectations, and help […]
Value Creation As A Form Of Discounting
There are all sorts of articles on creating superior differentiated value. Lots of them talk about creating more value than the customer expects, surprising and delighting them. In truth, I’ve been raised in this camp and have espoused some of these concepts myself. Just the concept of “added value,” is actually value over and above what the customer needs and expects. In reality, value creation can be a slippery slope. We need to create the value needed to win the business, at a price the customer is willing to pay and that is acceptable to us. Going over and above that […]
Don’t Fear Transformation, Fear Irrelevance!
A reader asked how to overcome individuals’ and organizational fear of transformation. My knee jerk reaction was that irrelevance is much more scary than transformation. Change, continuous improvement, adaptability, even transformation are not options in today’s business world. They are mandatory if we are to grow and thrive. They are virtually mandatory of we are to survive. Our business worlds are changing faster everyday. Technologies enable us to do things that, 5 years ago, were unimaginable. They enable us to engage people differently. They enable us to engage different people. Technology has shrunk time and space, so now we need […]
What Does It Mean To Be A Channel In An Omnichannel World?
All the talk in B2C and B2B these days is “omnichannel.” The B2C world has actually changed profoundly, and will continue to do so. We’re just seeing and starting to address the implications of omnichannel in the B2B world. Manufacturers are starting to embrace the concept. New tools and analytics enable manufacturers to more effectively engage customers regardless of the channel they choose at the moment. The tools enable us to have consistent conversations that build on each other as the customer engages us in different channels. If a customer engages us in a certain e-channel, moves to a call […]
If All We Use Is A Hammer…….
There’s the familiar saying, “If all you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts looking like a nail.” I’ve adopted this, “If all you USE is a hammer, your success is limited to finding and pounding nails.” Unfortunately, too many sales people have only one tool in their bags. It’s their product knowledge. What they are really good at doing is pitching the product. They may also be good at defending the product against alternatives. So as long as that’s all the customer cares about, there’s a good chance sales people who only carry “hammers,” those who base their […]