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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
“Target Close Date” Must Be Kept Sacred!
The “Target Close Date” is one of the most important aspects of pipeline, forecast, and deal integrity. Anything else in our deal strategy can change, but the Target Close Date must be kept as sacred! Now before I get everyone piling on, saying I’m totally unrealistic, that I don’t recognize the realities of sales, or that the customer is the key determinant of the close and it’s out of control; give me a chance to explain my position. There will always be good reason to change the target close date–but, that’s the point–there has to be good reason, any changes must […]
The Trial
For the salacious readers, no this isn’t a post gossiping on the courtroom antics of the most current troubled celebrity or politician (as much fun as it might be to comment on them). I wanted to address “trial programs,” that is programs we leverage to get the customer to actually use our products in a “trial” mode, before they commit to buy. Trial programs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They can be highly customized demos or benchmarks. They can be installing equipment or systems at a customer site, letting them use them for a period of time. […]
Surprise!!!
Surprise!!! It may be fun for a birthday party, but it’s never fun in sales. It means that somehow our carefully thought out approach has suddenly been thrown into disarray. The great progress we thought we were making has suddenly been washed away. We may have to go back to the drawing board, start all over. In the least we have to regroup and rethink our strategies. Surprises are a part of life in sales, our ability to manage, deal with, and recover from surprises is what separates top performers from everyone else. What can we do to avoid or […]
The Questions We Are Afraid To Ask
I wrote, If You Were In Your Customer’s Shoes, What Would You Do? Gary Hart offered a thoughtful comment that got me really thinking (as his comments so often do). Gary posed the idea, in our very first meetings with a customer, we should always be asking the customer, “What prompted you to have a meeting with me?” I couldn’t agree more, this or perhaps some variants: What is it about our products and services prompted you to get in touch with us? Why are you interested in speaking with us? Why would you consider replacing your current solutions with […]
If You Were In Your Customer’s Shoes, What Would You Do?
Some time ago, I was doing a deal review with a great sales team. They were preparing for an important call on the key decision makers of a customer. They deal, if they won, would have been huge–$10’s of millions. More importantly, it would have displaced their biggest competitor–the current incumbent in the account. The customer was undergoing a huge expansion of their business–building new sites, all of which required massive investments in new solutions. The sales team had been invited by the customer to discuss what they could do. The customer was considering a potential shift from their current […]
The Problem With Turnover
Before my non-US followers get in an uproar, I’m not talking about the revenue type of turnover. I wanted to spend some time discussing sales rep turnover. I worry too many sales executives spend too little time understanding turnover and it’s impact on the organization. Even worse, are those leaders who tend to think of people as commodities, churning through people continuously (but those folks are probably not reading blogs like mine). Depending on the size of the organization and the level of turnover, it can be costing the organization $100’s of millions to billions each year. Several years ago, I […]