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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
Pipeline Stench
Here’s an idea for some clever software entrepreneur, add “smell” to pipeline management software. Sometimes, I really wish we could “smell” our pipelines, we would be overwhelmed by the number of dead, stagnant, rotten deals and the resultant stench. (By the way, I will insist on a royalty from anyone adding this feature to their software.) It’s amazing the number of sales people and organizations I encounter claiming to have great pipelines. I look at the pipelines, they are filled with deals. If the organization has some sort of “coverage” model, for example, 3, 5, or more, they always have the […]
Insight, Change, And Value
I’ve been writing a lot about Insight recently. In the course of the posts, I’ve gotten really outstanding and intriguing comments, both privately and publicly. Clearly Insight is important—it always has been, always will be. What we label as Insight may have evolved. We may have taught customers about products—we still do need to teach them about products, whether it’s sales people or through content we create. We may have taught them about solutions to problems they have had. We may have taught them about new ways to run their business, new opportunities, how they might improve. Those are all various […]
Insight, Co-Creation, De-commoditization
Let’s face it! When we wash away all the hyperbole, so many of our products, services and solutions have become commoditized. When I first started selling, I sold mainframe computers, today, they’re virtually commoditized. Take complex enterprise software systems, whether ERP, CRM, whatever; for all intents they’re commoditized. While proud sales people might say, “We handle the date field differently than anyone else.” it’s really very difficult to differentiate them. Maybe today’s release is a little better/richer than the alternatives, but tomorrow they stair step us. Commoditization of our offerings strikes terror into all our hearts. In a commoditized world, […]
Insight,Co-Creation, And Value
I wanted to expand on my post, Insight And Co-Creation, and much of my writing on Value Propositions/Creation. Often, I speak of the value we create in the process. It’s the most overlooked, yet the most powerful and sustainable part of our Value Proposition/Value Creation. We get a lot about Value Propositions wrong. To0 much is focused on the value our products or solutions create for the customer, or the value our companies and organizations bring to customers using our solutions. Too often, our value propositions are nothing more than glorified FABs (Features/Advantages/Benefits). Take a few minutes right now. Go […]
Insight And Co-Creation
Yesterday, I was talking to one of the smartest sales executives I’ve ever met. We were talking about, what else, selling with Insight. His team had quietly been doing this for years–a very long time. When you look at the track record of success and growth, clearly both the overall organization is doing great things and his sales people are executing differently than their competitors. We were talking about how his team engaged customers, what they did differently, and why it was so effective. After a few minutes of talking, it both struck us the power of Insight really comes […]
What Do The Numbers Mean?
Sales professionals are very “numbers” focused. Where are we on quota attainment? What revenue is produced today, this week, this month, this quarter? How many calls do we make today? How many meetings did we have this week? How many proposals did we complete? There seems to be no end to the metrics we can establish for sales. But the metrics or number have little value by themselves. However, to often, it seems too many sales people and managers focus on the numbers as the goal. We know outbound prospecting calls are important. Establishing an arbitrary goal, say 100 per […]