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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
What We Can Learn From The ER!
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be taken to an Emergency Room, you know the concept of Triage. In triage, they aren’t trying to determine what caused your heart to stop, why you may have stopped breathing, what’s causing profuse amounts of blood to pour from your body. All they are trying to do is keep you alive long enough to determine the underlying problem. They do what they must to get your heart beating–then send you into cardiology, or get you breathing, or stop the bleeding. It’s never pretty. It’s seldom the “solution,” it just allows you to […]
What’s The Purpose Of Account Planning?
We talk a lot about account planning, particularly if our “territory” is one or a few large accounts. Generally, we wrap a lot of nice words around the reasons we do account planning: Develop deep and trusted relationships in the account. Create a customer for life, through providing great, ongoing customer experiences. Grow the account. Become a strategic partner. Build additional business….. The list can go on. All are important, but sometimes, I tend to be a little more crass. I believe it’s my God-given right to 100% share of the account! That means it’s my job to find all […]
Is The Email “Open” Really The Goal?
I read an intriguing post from Jim Keenan about Subject Lines That Work For Sales Emails. It showed an infographic about the subject lines that maximized email opens. The top 5 are: RE: (with 92% opens) RE: Follow Up (with 90% opens) RE: Update (with 89% opens) RE: Introduction (with 88% opens) RE: Checking In (with 87% opens) The thing that struck me is these are all manipulations. They are fundamentally oriented to trick the recipient into opening the email. Perhaps thinking the email was a response to an email originally sent by the recipient. It raises an issue, Is […]
It’s Never JUST A Sales Problem!
We often get called by execs, “We’ve got a sales problem! We need your help,” or some variation on the theme. It could be, “Sales isn’t doing their job,” “They aren’t making their numbers, what’s wrong with those sales guys?” As we start to understand the situation, it always comes down to, “Revenue/orders are down,” “We aren’t making the numbers,” “We’re losing share,” “We’re losing customers…..” “We see sales missing it’s goals year after year after year!” Since sales is responsible for getting orders, generating revenue, acquiring customers, and growing the business–if we aren’t doing those things, it’s easy to […]
3 Behaviors That Drive Successful Sales People
Recently, I read a HBR Post by Ryan Fuller, 3 Behaviors That Drive Successful People. My knee jerk reaction was, “Well duhhhh thanks for stating the obvious.” In a kinder, gentler moment (I do have them every once in a while), I thought maybe it isn’t so obvious. The findings in the research, “sales success is highly correlated with three things: Spending enough time with customers and prospects. Having a large and healthy network in your own organization. Spending time and getting attention from your own manager and other senior people in your own organization.” Let me add my take […]
Stalled Deals?
We all have them, we know what they look like. They’re stuck. We look at aging reports and see them staying in the same stage of the pipeline, not moving forward, getting older, moldier as time passes. Sometimes, I see entire pipeline’s clogged up with stalled deals–I feel like calling “Roto Rooter.” The longer a deal is stalled, the less likely it’s going to happen. There are a lot of things that cause deals to stall, let me review a few that seem to be the biggest–with some ideas about how to free them up. They Aren’t Real Deals: Probably the biggest […]