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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
“I Don’t Know What You Do, But I Know What You Need To Do!”
We know we have to challenge our customers to think differently, that we have to bring ideas and insight. We try to be provocative to catch our customers’ attentions. But absent an understanding of the customer, being challenging or provocative is just another pitch! My good friend, Tamara Schenk, shared a story with me. A vendor approached her, stating, “You need to make some changes in the sales enablement strategies you are driving in your organization! You need to do this………” You guessed it, it was a pitch for his solution. I laughed when she told me her response, “Thank […]
What Did You Sell That For?
As a preface, I have to confess to a little frustration and some venting. Too often, when I speak to sales people and ask them about what they sell and their customers, I pose the question, “What did you sell that for?” The responses, while logical, are frustrating. Often, the sales person responds with “That was a $ 1 million deal,” or something indicating the order size or revenue. Alternatively, they respond with the product they sold, “The customer was looking to buy some new software and chose our solution,” or “They wanted to buy this piece of equipment, and I […]
Stop Letting Your Competitor Define Your Sales Strategy!
Recently, I was doing some reviews with a sales team. We were talking about some of their deals and they were consumed with a specific competitor. They complained, “How do we deal with this competitor? How do we respond to the things they are doing?” With those questions, I could see they were in deep trouble. But they were in a position that too many other sales people fall victim to. The sales people were letting the competitor drive and set the sales strategy instead of having it driven by the customer. There’s no mincing words, this is a losing strategy […]
Are You Building Coalitions With Your Customers?
As sales professionals, we’re supposed to be great at building relationships with our customers. Relationships are important, they are the foundation to doing business. I don’t mean relationships in the “old sense,” but relationships earned through establishing trust and credibility with your customers, and the customer’s respect for the value created in the relationship. But somehow, I think relationships are too narrow. Too often, as I look at the relationships sales people build, they are narrowly focused. Too many sales people focus their efforts on too few people in the organization. Every sales person has their “buddy” in the account. It’s […]
Time Management, Some Thoughts
My friend, Anthony Iannarino, wrote a great post, The Key To Time Management, Stop Wasting It. It struck a chord, and I wanted to add a few thoughts. What are you stopping? As Anthony points out, we do all sorts of things, trying to figure out how we fit everything into our busy days. We find excuses to avoid the most critical, highest priority things. Often, we just get into bad habits. We do the same things we’ve always done–but because workloads have skyrocketed, we are just doing them in greater volume–struggling with keeping up. We continue to do the […]
Newton’s Third Law, Every Action Creates An Equal And Opposite Reaction
Many of you might be surprised, but I was actually trained as a physicist. One of the first things we learn in physics — even in high school are Newton’s Laws. One of the most quoted is Newton’s Third Law, Every Action Create An Equal And Opposite Reaction. Funny, I never really thought of Newton as a sales thought leader, but his third law helps us understand a lot of the challenges we face in engaging our customers. Customers don’t want to see sales people–it’s something all of us face. Perhaps it’s not because they don’t need to see sales people, but […]