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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
Mis-diagnosis
Recently, I had a fascinating conversation with Dr. Howard Dover about some programs he and Becc Holland are conducting with his students. We talked about some fascinating concepts: Mis-diagnosis and Missed-diagnosis. Both concepts are hugely important, so I need to separate writing about them. In this article, I’ll focus on Mis-diagnosis. I have written a companion article on Missed-diagnosis. I encourage you to read both. What is a Mis-diagnosis? At it’s simplest level is is mis-diagnosis is an incorrect identification of a problem. Mis-diagnoses are rampant, and not for malicious reasons. For instance, as sellers, we are looking for customers […]
Settling For What We Get, Rather Than Getting What We Want……
I read a fascinating article about the response rates for a variety of outbound email prospecting techniques. The author, with a client, had tested 8 techniques to pitch their solutions. The response rates were anywhere between 0.29% and 1.25%. The sample sizes was 200K, which is significant. The argument the author was making was the technique that produced 1.25% was the best approach (which aligned with what they sold). It was roughly 4 times better than the lowest performing technique and 2-3 times better than the others. The logic behind this was sound, the author had produced a technique that […]
“Give Your Best Leads To Your Top Performers!”
I can’t begin to count the number of “experts” filling my social feeds with the sage wisdom and advice on maximizing performance: “Give your best leads to your top performers!” The rationale they provide goes something like: “If your top performers have win rates 2X more than the average for the rest of your sales team, then giving them your best leads will drive 2X yield over giving them to others! You don’t want to be wasting your leads!” They go on to say, “The easiest way to hit your goals is to give all the best opportunities to your […]
Are You a V1.0 Seller In a V3.7 World
I had a frustrating evening. My mom has a very old Iphone. She wanted to get some new apps, but was struggling to get them on her phone. Normally, she can install these apps with no problems, but she needed help. I found the apps in the App store, clicked on “Get” and nothing happened. Eventually, I figured it out. She was on IOS 13 (she has a very old phone) and the apps needed a minimum of IOS 15. As I was trying to fix her phone, she was looking at mine. “Why does your lock screen look so […]
What Value Are Your Customers Creating For You?
We’ve been taught we have to create value with our customers. There are a lot of definitions to this, including: But what about the reciprocal, what value do our customers create for us? Usually, we think of that in terms of the revenue the opportunity will generate for us. Sometimes we think of retention/renewal revenues, LTV, expansion revenues. For key and strategic accounts, we think of the total revenue we can generate across the account. And sometimes, in addition to revenue, we may look at gross margins generated by the customer. But we need to look at value creation–and the […]
Do Your Customers Feel Heard?
We are driven to pitch our products and solutions. Our questioning and discovery strategies each have an agenda, we seek answers that enable us to pitch. We have presentations focusing on us, our products, our companies and how great we are. We have closing strategies focused on getting the order. Somehow, our customers are lost in the process. They don’t feel heard. What does this mean? It’s not just about what’s happening in their business—their problems, their opportunities, their challenges. It’s not just about how they navigate their buying process. It’s not just about learning how others are addressing similar […]