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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
80% Of Our Revenue Comes From…….
Data is powerful. We’re all enamored with analytics and what they can tell us about our customers and our business. But data can also be very dangerous if we really don’t understand it. If we only look at it on a surface level, never drilling down to understand it, we can draw dangerously wrong conclusions. We’re all familiar with the Pareto Principle. Somehow, it seems virtually every piece of analysis fits the Pareto Principle (or almost). 80% of our revenue is generated by 20% of our sales people. 80% of our revenue comes from 20% of our customers, 80% of our […]
In Defense Of Transactional Buying
It’s not often I disagree with my friend, Anthony Iannarino, but he recently wrote a great post, Transactional Selling To Avoid Conflicts Around Price. I don’t really disagree with his point of view, but I think there is a different way of looking at transactional selling, or rather, transactional buying. We always tend to associate these with “priced based buying.” We tend to think the only value we can create is through pricing actions–discounting. First, price is always a key consideration whether we are involved in a complex or transactional buying/selling process. As sales professionals, we have to create sufficient value to […]
What’s Your Customer Ready To Do?
I read an interesting post last week. It focused on the importance for sales people aligning themselves with “What the customer is ready to do.” On the face of it, it made a lot of sense. It really focuses on the necessity of aligning our selling process with the customer’s buying process. At each stage of their buying process, the customer has to be ready to move to their next step. If we aren’t aligned with them acting on what they are ready to do and moving to the next step, we aren’t engaging the customer effectively. An extreme example […]
Please Do Your Homework Before Contacting Me!
As sales professionals looking for new business, it’s critical that we establish our credibility in our very first contacts with a prospect or customer. We then have to maintain that through every subsequent communication, creating value in every exchange. We all know that, but I’m amazed at how few people execute that. I get all sorts of queries–and I’m not talking about the obvious SPAM who’s sole purpose is to clog up the web. Emails asking me if we are interested in learning the latest advancements in lean manufacturing technologies, and how we can leverage them in our factories–I suppose because I write […]
What’s The Deal?
The other day I had one of those Abbot and Costello “Who’s On First” moments. I was doing a review with a sales team. One sales person was presenting some stuff. In my normal rude manner, I interrupted the sales person asking, “What’s the deal?” The sales person misunderstood me, replying, “Nothing, everything’s OK,” to which I responded, “No, what’s the deal?” The conversation went on for a few moments, the sales person kept coming up with different answers, describing different activities, but never answered my question. (I have to admit, I probably extended it, I was having so much fun.) But […]
Do You Deserve To Be A Manager?
I read a great post in HBR, If You’re Not Helping People Develop, You’re Not Management Material. It’s a fantastic article, definitely a must read for managers and non-managers alike. The job of the manager is to get things done through people! The best managers focus on maximizing the performance of each individual and of their teams–both in their current roles and developing them to grow and contribute further. This means finding and recruiting the right people, assuring they have the strategies, processes, program, systems, tools, support, and training necessary for success. It means setting clear goals and expectations for performance […]