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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
Designing The Customer Experience For Our Efficiency, Not The Customers’
This afternoon, we had a problem with a critical tool that we use. I am currently on the road, running from meeting to meeting, but I had to address the problem, it was impacting our people and work they were doing. I called customer service, got a very good agent. Unfortunately, the answers she was giving me weren’t satisfactory so I asked if I could speak to a manager. She was pleased to have me do so, but couldn’t transfer me. “We don’t transfer these calls to managers, I have to send a note to a manager and someone will get […]
“I Can Save You More Than You Are Currently Spending” And Other Stupid Sales Ploys
We’ve all gotten the call, the phone rings, it’s a sales person. Somewhere in the first 5 sentences of his pitch, he says, “I can save you more than you are currently spending,” or something similar. How utterly stupid! Paraphrasing Ian Brodie, “How can you make that statement until you know what I’m doing and what I’m spending?” I’m a little more sadistic than that. Any sales person calling me with that claim, I immediately say, “That’s awesome, how do I take advantage of the deal?” The sales person gets excited, continues their pitch, I interrupt, “You’ve sold me, don’t […]
You Won’t Win With The Best Product!
Sales people are obsessed with products. We know every feature, function, feed, and speed. We know the most nuanced details of the product and how it’s used. We know the competitors, comparing each thing the competitor does with what we do—“The competitor’s only comes in black, we offer four colors……. We have endless analyses, brochures, case studies and testimonials about the superiority of our products. We have demos, benchmarks, and other tools that prove the superiority of our products. We can spew endless features, advantages, and benefits. We are prepared to pitch anything about the product at a moment’s noticed–anxiously […]
QoS–Quality Of Service
We’ve all experienced it, our mobile phone rings, upon answering all we hear is static. We move to another location — in pursuit of the ever elusive bars, usually shouting something like, “Can you hear me now?” We struggle to hear, we redial several times because the call was dropped. Those around us go through the same thing. For many of us, the day of the crystal clear call, the call that always got through on the first dial, the call that was never dropped are distant memories. We complain, yet we accept it–this must be the price we pay […]
When Are We Going To Integrate Sales And Marketing?
We know customers want to us to engage them differently. There’s all sorts of research that says customers want to self educate. Other research showing that customers are engaging sales people later in the process–largely after they have determined the problem, determines their needs and requirements, and in fact narrowed their solution alternatives to a few choices (of which they are indifferent). Likewise, sales and marketing are facing pressures. Recognizing the desire of customers to self educate or to avoid seeing sales people, they are providing more content. Using marketing automation tools, they are able to “move” the customer through their […]
You Have To Start At The Beginning
The other evening, I was relaxing, watching something on Netflix. It was a mystery thriller, with quite a complex plot that had taken some very interesting twists and turns. I was a two thirds of the way through the movie (70% to be precise), when my wife joined me. She had been busy doing some things, but when she sat down, she immediately started asking: What’s happened? I don’t understand why this character is doing this? What are they referring to here? I made it through about another 5 minutes of the movie, but all her questions were distracting me […]