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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
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 […]
Sales Person As Orchestrator Or Resource Manager
The role of the sales person is changing–we all know that. The way customers buy is changing, the complexities of our own products and solutions, the broad range of people involved in the customer buying process mandates a different approach to selling and careful reconsideration of how we define the role of account and territory managers. My posts, Sales Role Agility and Separating The Challenger Sales Person From Insight Delivery, stimulated many comments and conversations. Increasingly, for complex B2B solutions, no single person can master everything needed to drive customer success. In mid sized to larger companies, the sheer breadth of solutions […]
Separating The Challenger Sales Person From Insight Delivery
Are “Challenging” and “Insight” synonymous? I had been mixing them together, but more recently have been thinking they may be but don’t have to be. Or actually, I’ve been thinking, “Does the Challenger sales person have to be the provider/teacher of the insights, or is she the orchestrator and manager of the process?” So much of the discussion around Challenger has been on providing Insight and the Teaching Pitch. Sales organizations have been investing a lot in preparing sales people to go out and challenge, providing pitches and decks the sales person uses to “teach the customer.” But now we […]
The “Street Price” Is All That Counts
Go to any bazaar or souk in the Middle East or Africa, go to a marketplace in Latin or South America, go to the famed “Silk Alley” in Beijing and you quickly learn the difference between the marked price and the “street” price. No one pays attention to the marked price. The starting point for discussion is the street price and the perception of value is based on the presumed street price. So when I go to Silk Alley (which I try to avoid, but am sometimes dragged to) and see something “priced” at 1000 Yuan, my assessment of value is never based […]
If The Customer Doesn’t Want To Buy, Discounts Won’t Help
We’ve been working with a customer, diligently talking about their problems and concerns. Educating them about our solution. Trying to move them through our sales process. They’ve been interested, somewhat. They’ve met with us, asked us the right questions, perhaps given some buying signals, but things drag, the deal becomes stuck. The customer isn’t saying no, but they aren’t moving forward. It’s just hanging there, we want to get them to buy! So we play the discount card. Too many sales people think resistance is about money, so unilaterally, they offer the discount to break the deal free. “Buy now […]
Does Insight Selling Require “Scars?”
We’re supposed to bring our customers insight–opportunities they are missing, new ways to run their business, new ways to grow. No one argues that. We make sure we have sales people with the right behaviors and skills. We prep our sales people with training, information, case studies, data, teaching pitches. We charge them to engage their customers in a different way, providing insight. They do their homework, research, prepare for the call. They are meeting the “C-Level” for that all important meeting. The appointed hour comes, they muster the courage, meet with the customer , ready to provide insight. Then the […]