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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
Leveraging “Lighthouse Customers” For Insight
Do you have “Lighthouse Customers?” Lighthouse Customers are critical for every organization. They are organizations in which we have very close relationships. They are important to our business, not necessarily for their business volume—more on that later. We are important to their business. Lighthouse customers give us the opportunity to really learn. They help us develop new products and solutions. While we try to learn as much as we can about the evolving needs of a large number of our customers, there are a small number with whom we have deep relationships. Customers we use as sounding boards for thinking […]
Does Your Customer Understand Your Differentiation?
I’m often amazed by the discussions–or absence of discussions on differentiation. In order to win, we have to differentiate our solutions, but we have to differentiate them in the areas the customer cares about. Most of the time, it’s long lists of features, comparing our solutions to the competition–with the goal being more boxes checked in our column than the competitors.’ We overwhelm and confuse customers with long lists of features, benefits, and whatever we can. But when we differentiate ourselves, it’s critical to focus on what the customer cares about. Everything else is meaningless–in fact wastes the customer’s time. […]
It’s Not About The Form/Template
The other day I wrote, “It’s Account Planning Season” again. Commenting on the post, Tamara Schenk reminded me the value of account planning–or any planning we do–is less in completing the plan itself but really all about the process. Tamara makes a tremendous point that seems to be too often lost on managers and sales people alike. Everywhere I go, we may be talking about opportunity planning/deal strategies, call planning, account/territory planning, even pipeline management; I see two parallel things at play: Managers are concerned about the completion of the plan! They want to see the form, template, or the […]
Flipping The Pipeline Value Pyramid
Pipeline reviews and reporting are constant sources of contention between management and sales people. Most often the value of this activity is portrayed as the inverted triangle in this diagram. Managers are getting all the value! From a sales person’s perspective, they get no value from it, but managers need it to make sure the business in control. At it’s worst, sales people view it as a “Big Brother Is Watching Exercise.” Unfortunately, too many managers view it in the same way, reveling in the concept of being able to watch and micromanage. In reality, however, the pipeline and metrics […]
Selling And Order Taking
Selling and Order Taking are sometimes confusing. They overlap in some areas, they have some similar characteristics, they both produce revenue. Each has it’s place, but they are different. Order taking is very important and effective in many customer engagement scenarios. When we can count on customers finding us. When the customer can, for the most part, educate themselves and make good decisions. When the customer is looking for a very efficient buying transaction. Where the questions a customer might have are fairly routine and predictable. Where the customer decision making process is very simple–perhaps limited to one decision maker. […]
What Is High Performance?
I was speaking to a client a few weeks ago about some “performance” issues he saw in the organization. He was relatively new in his job and was besieged with performance issues. In our discussion, I expected him to talk about the low performers and how he should be dealing with them. Instead, he was troubled by some people viewed by many in the organization, including his boss, as high performers. Since high performers are role models of what is expected in sales, normally, we would be looking at how to replicate the performance of these people across the organization. But my client […]