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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
Learning From Sales and Marketing Automation Vendors
Two of the hottest markets for “tools” are Sales and Marketing Automation markets. There are thousands of vendors/solutions, growing by 100’s every year. 10″s of billions are being spent to implement these tools. All of the vendors clamor for attention and visibility. Whether it’s spectacular events like Dreamforce, or the constant emails, “thought leadership,” articles, webinars, and other programs they leverage. All of these vendors want to “teach” us, which seems right. But, I’ve discovered the secret to learning from these vendors. The best way and most efficient way to learn from these vendors is not to pay attention […]
Ignorance Or Ineptitude?
The words, Ignorance and Ineptitude, catch your attention immediately. Being accused of either provokes an immediate reaction. It may be hurt or disappointment. Possibly defensiveness or denial. Sometimes the “fight” response comes up, “Who are you calling…..?” Whatever the response, these words, when applied personally are offensive and they demand our attention. I’ve been re-reading Dr. Atul Gawande’s, The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right. While the book came out years ago, it’s worth a quick review. Gawande talks about Ignorance, the Lack Of Knowledge; and Ineptitude, the Failure To Apply That Knowledge. Ignorance or lack of knowledge impacts […]
Your Sales Process Is Not A One Way Street!
Our thinking and visualizations of our sales processes, deal strategies, funnels, and pipelines often cause us to do the wrong things. It’s because we have a “one way street” mentality as we think of our deal strategies. Things progress–top to bottom, left to right (or right to left in certain parts of the world). We prospect, qualify, discover, demonstrate, propose, close, implement. Everything moves in one direction, we’re always moving forward—-except when we don’t. The other day, I was reviewing a critical deal. You guessed it, it was large and critical to the quarter end. The sales person had it […]
Buying Acceleration
It’s become fashionable to talk about Sales Acceleration. I suppose it seems sexier than talking about sales effectiveness or efficiency. Perhaps we can visualize the concept of speed much more easily than other metaphors. Inbound sales people are constantly trying to accelerate sales by getting to the customer quickly. Just the other day, I made the mistake of downloading another white paper, within minutes I get emails and calls from sales people about demoing and buying their product. As sales people, we try to move things faster through the sales process. We want to get things done, book the order, […]
Secret Closing Techniques
An article, “Secret Closing Techniques,” caught my eye. I’ve never really had any trouble closing, but I’m always looking to improve. Some expert had discovered the secrets to closing deals. Deals you’ve worked through but just can’t close. Summarizing the “secrets,” Stories, Curiosity, Sense of Urgency. I reread the article several times, thinking I may have misunderstood. Don’t get me wrong, stories, curiosity, sense of urgency are all critical things to do in the sales process. But this author wrote about them as the secrets in closing. As I reflected on the article, I thought, perhaps if we use these […]
Is It Your Sales Process?
Most organizations I work with have a sales process. But when I look at it, it’s not THEIR sales process. Sure it’s a sales process, but it’s not theirs. That is, they’ve leveraged the same generic sales stage steps that came with their CRM system. Or they’ve used the generic sales process from the sales training company they last used. Or it’s the process they put in place 10 years ago. It’s a sales process (or some semblance), but it’s not THEIR sales process. Often, coincidentally, they aren’t using it. Sales people say, “It doesn’t work.” It’s easy to understand, […]