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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
Your Competitor May Be An App!
As consumers, everyday we see apps, great on-line stores and other technology enabled experiences that make our buying experiences easier and often more pleasant. It’s so much easier to check out reviews–even if they are from strangers, then to deal with a sales person. It’s harder to find them in retail stores, when you do, they may not be able to answer your questions, but they are always asking about “ringing the sale up at the cash register.” This phenomena isn’t limited to B2C, we see more of the same things happening in B2B. We already know that more than […]
Do You Know The Answers To These Three Questions?
As you know, I’m constantly doing deal reviews with sales people. Each review is similar. The sales person has spent a lot of time understanding needs and requirements, positioning their solution to best fulfill their needs and requirements. Most know who the competitors are and are trying to position themselves favorably against the competition. In the reviews, there’s always a lot of background on our relationships with the customer, the activities to date. There’s a lot of discussion about upcoming activities. At some point, I always ask the same 3 questions. This is where things start going off the rails. […]
Lot’s Of Activity, No Results!
Everyone I encounter is very busy. Virtually everyone I meet works long hours. Their schedules are filled with meetings, calls, all sorts of things. Many people seem to wear their “busyness” as a badge of honor, as if “real business people do a dozen meetings a day, handle 300 emails and make a dozen phone calls.” They seem to look down on those that don’t. But then you start looking at the results of those activities. What outcomes are they producing–whether it’s meeting their quotas, whether it’s developing their people/providing the right leadership and coaching, or anything else. When we align the […]
Always Be Closing!
Recently, a number of people have asked me my thoughts on closing skills. I think they are asking me about the 8-12-15… techniques to close. I’ve never been much of a fan of these—do I use the assumptive close, the puppy dog close, …? I’ve always just asked for the order–seems to work. However, as I’ve reflected on it, I think Alec Baldwin was right in Glen Garry Glen Ross–we have to always be closing—but it’s different than what he talks about. What should we be doing, how can we, “Always Be Closing?” Closing starts long before the first call we ever […]
Insight, The Convergence Of Strategies
Insight has become the buzzword for engaging today’s buyers. We are supposed to teach our customers–helping them identify new opportunities, areas to improve, problems they may not realize they have. But we misunderstand a lot about Insight. For us to be successful, Insight requires a convergence of strategies–those of our customers and those for our own organization. Absent this, Insight has little meaning or value. Our corporate strategies shape the Insights we provide. They identify where we are best, where we create the greatest value, where we are most differentiated, and where we can profitably deliver our products and services. Consequently, Insight […]
What’s The ROI Of Stupidity?
I wrote, How Can We Deliver Insights Without Critical Thinking Skills? Along with Mike Kunkle’s 22nd Century Selling Skills presentation, it’s stirred up some interesting discussions. My friend, Gary Hart, stirred the pot a little by posing the question, “Is there an ROI in developing critical thinking skills?” I think it’s an awesome question, I think unconsciously, that may be in the minds of many business and sales leaders as they look for solutions to help improve the performance of sales people. I suppose the case can be made that we don’t need to invest in developing the critical thinking/problem solving […]