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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
Solution Provider Or Problem Solver?
As sales people, we are supposed to provide solutions to our customers problems. We either lead with Insight, making customers aware of opportunities/problems and incenting them to change; or we find a customer that knows they have a problem and is looking to solve it. At some point, we present the customer a solution to their problem–hopefully they accept ours, implement it, and we’re all happy. But that doesn’t mean we’re problem solvers! I was suddenly struck by this in reading Tim Ohai’s post, I Can’t Say It Any Plainer: SOLVE the @$%! PROBLEM! I think we confuse proposing and providing […]
Our Success Is Based On The Misery Of Our Customers!
OK, maybe misery is too dramatic, but at its core, unless our customers are “miserable” we will never be successful in selling them. This morning I was having a conversation with a sales person in a healthcare related company. We were discussing his sales strategies, value propositions, and how to get customers to buy. Finally, possibly in frustration, I blurted out, “Your services create value for people in misery. If they aren’t in misery, you’re wasting your time and their time.” In hindsight, I felt a little like Gordon Gecko declaring “Misery is good!” As crass as it sounds, all […]
Burying Our Heads In The Sand
Everyone acknowledges the world is changing, perhaps faster than many want, but it is changing. Change isn’t the issue, it’s a fact. The issue is, How Do We Respond To/Deal With Change? There are probably five ways of dealing with change. Instigators! There are the first movers, the innovators. People who imagine new possibilities, creating great new business models. Those creating previously unimaginable products and services. Those not bound by, “This is the way things have always been done.,” but imagine new possibilities, pursuing them with vigor. If you are one of these (be sure you are and not a […]
Who Is The Customer?
Some of you are scratching your heads. What’s Dave getting into? Aren’t customers the people that buy our stuff? Aren’t they the prospects we go after to convince to buy our stuff? It’s actually a tougher question than it appears to be. Answering the question requires deep insight into what it is we do better than anyone else in the world, and who needs what we do. Answering the question also demands that we identify who we shouldn’t be selling to. But clearly identifying the customer is critical in focusing our sales and marketing where we have the greatest insights, […]
The “C” Words In Sales
Get your minds out of the gutters! My mom reads these posts! I’ve been avoiding this in my blog for some time, but I’ve broken down and decided to write about it. The “C” words I’m talking about are Commission and Compensation. A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were commiserating about the topic. Seems we both are always asked about, “What’s the best commission plan, how should I pay my sales people, should I look at a 70/30 split, what about 100% commission” and on and on and…… We know people want answers and help, but it’s one […]
Shallowness And Networking!
It’s clear we’re in a frenzy of networking and connecting. There seems to be a rush to establish connections, friends, whatever. People are reaching out, connecting, racking up the numbers. They’re using every channel possible–LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google +, and more. But then there’s this odd phenomena. Somehow, I’m under the mistaken opinion the purpose of networking and connecting is to form some sort of relationship. It needn’t be close, but it’s a relationship. We build some sort of informal bond, develop some level of trust……… But instead, networking seems to be more about, list generation, lead gen, and other things–but little […]