Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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.
Too often, both we and our customers get so caught up in activities that we lose sight of what we are trying to achieve. A few weeks ago, I was participating in a deal review. It was a huge software deal, the customer was evaluating new systems to replace something that had been in place for a long time and was, apparently, no longer serving them. As I listened to the review, there was lots of discussion about the requirements, what the customer was looking for, the competition, activities that had taken place, ideas about next steps, the decision-making process, […]
Read MoreSometimes I talk to frustrated sales people, “All you say is we’ve got to give the customers Insight, we have to focus on solving their problems. But my manager is beating me up on what I’m selling! How can I spend time solving the customers’ problems if I’m not selling our products and services?” It’s a great concern! Our job is to sell our products and solutions. It is to create and grow the revenue for our companies. We can’t lose focus on that. The real issue, however, is “Are we focusing on customers who have the problems we can solve?” […]
Read MoreToo often, our problem as professional sales or marketing people is that we think like professional sales and marketing people. “Duh, Dave….thanks for sharing……” We see things from our perspectives. We’ve got great ideas and insights, we’re anxious to demonstrate our knowledge and prowess to the customer. We’re really enthusiastic about our products and solutions, we just know the value that customers can get from them! We’ve got our jobs to do, things to achieve. We see all sorts of opportunities for our customers, we want to help them achieve their goals and grow. All this is great. The best […]
Read MoreWe want to establish relationships with our customers. We want to be helpful. But sometimes being helpful isn’t helpful–to us in achieving our objectives and to the customer in achieving theirs. Our customers are very busy. They have too much on their plates, they get diverted. So we try to be helpful, in order to move things along. We start doing things for the customer. Sometimes being helpful is helpful. We may be able to get some things done faster or more effectively than the customer. We may take some of the tedious stuff they have to do in their […]
Read More