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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
“Start With The End In Mind,” Our Disconnect With Customers…..
Habit 2 of Stephen Covey’s famous, “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People,” is “Start (Begin) with the end in mind.” Covey writes about the importance of having a destination or a goal, Knowing what we are trying to achieve forces us to focus on the things critical to achieving the goal. Without this, we wander aimlessly, perhaps without understanding what we are trying to achieve. But, as we work in organizations and work with our customers, sometimes this can be the source of a giant disconnect. For example, as sellers, our focus is on closing a deal. We orient […]
Price, Cost, Value Propositions, Value Realization, Value Creation……
“Value” is a critical concept in everything we do, but particularly when we are engaging customers, hoping to present a solution they will buy. Yet too often, we and our customers misunderstand the elements around “value,” as a result, we fail to leverage value to it’s greatest impact. Most of the time, we and our customers think of value in terms of the price/cost. We present a solution, we define the price, the customer evaluates it against alternatives and it’s budget, then chooses to go forward or to do something else. In presenting our value this way, we usually defend […]
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Alex McNaughten
Preface: Alex McNaughten, his co-founder, and I have been spending a lot of time talking recently. Alex and Alistair have a vision for one of the best AI based coaching platforms I’ve seen, Grw.ai. Alex’s story is fascinating, but one of the things Alex raises is similar to what many other participants have also raised, and what drove me to begin this series. He writes, “The (sales) profession is not in great shape……. This is the reason I am still in sales-I am determined to fix it! “Why I am so interested in selling,” Alex McNaughten I started in sales […]
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Daniel Schmidt
Preface: I’ve been introduced to Daniel Schmidt by my friend Don Mulhern. While I haven’t met Daniel, it’s fascinating to read his perspective on selling. Like so many other participants, Daniel didn’t set out to be in sales, but found himself selling. There are words Daniel uses in his story which are common to my own experience and what so many other participants in this series say, “solving problems……energizing….passion….imagining possibilities…..personal growth…..fun!” As Daniel describes, every day, every situation, every customer is different. Figuring out each situation and contributing to customers achieving great business outcomes is what excites most high performing […]
Seeing What We Want To See…..
It’s human nature to have biases. We tend to see things the way we want to see them. We find facts and evidence that support our experience or what we want to believe. Our propensity to do this causes us, perhaps unconsciously, to defend the status quo. But this doesn’t mean we are right. The doesn’t mean we are seeing things the way they are. Ignoring this puts us at huge risk. We may be making mistakes. We may have missed something. Things may have changed and we are ignoring, consequently vulnerable to consequences of that change. We must continue […]
Combative Conversations…..
Just got off a call with one of the best salespeople I’ve ever worked with. We were prepping for a very difficult customer meeting this afternoon. As we discussed the situation, he described the difficulties this customer had created in the past, he talked about how unreasonable they had been, how they weren’t meeting commitments they had made to him. We also discussed the changing expectations his company had in the relationship with this customer. Without a doubt it was likely to be a very difficult conversation. But as we spoke further he said, “They are going to be very […]