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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
The New “Office,” And Work Life
Perhaps dating myself, when I first started selling about 30 years ago, my business life was basically centered around my office and my customer locations. I was fortunate enough to have two offices–a cube in the bull pen at my company, one at my largest customer’s location. Most of my “work” was centered on those locations (Well, OK, I did spend a lot of time at Harry’s of Hanover Square). My day would usually start at my office at the customer. I’d meet with customers through the day. I’d wrap up the day in my office at my company–usually to research […]
Sales Management SOP
The other day I wrote about the “Almost Perfect Sales Management Article.” That post stimulated a flurry of questions about a Sales Management Standard Operating Process/System. I though I’d start to address that here. There are a few key building blocks to the Sales Management/Leadership Process. They are tightly interrelated–that is none can exist in isolation and all must be in place to drive the highest levels of performance both of the Sales Leadership team and the organization. The building blocks are: Leadership Overall Sales Strategy Business Management People Coaching Within each of these major building blocks there are a […]
Creating Excuses To Keep Going Back To The Customer
I was in a fascinating discussion the other day. We are talking about “conventional sales wisdom,” (which I would retitle, Stupid Techniques We All Feel For). The topic of conversation was, “How do we create excuses to keep coming back to the customer? How do we keep the door open for yet another meeting?” There were all sorts of techniques I recall being taught in my early sales training. Take them a piece of collateral, a case study, anything that would provoke another meeting or discussion. References–rather than anticipating the need for references and bringing them to a meeting, use the […]
Consultative Selling–We See Great Examples Everywhere
As people, particularly we consultants, are prone to do, we make things more complex than they need be. Most of the principles we look at in high performance selling are simply the disciplined and systematic application of common sense and the Golden Rule (I mean the “Do unto others….” one). Consultative selling is a key means of aligning ourselves with the customer, helping them understand opportunities to improve their business, diagnosing problems they may have, and recommending solutions. Dozens of books have been written about various aspects of consultative selling, $10’s of millions are spent every year on developing skills in […]
One Size Does Not Fit All
I wrote about “The End Of Solution Selling” the other day. There’s a rich conversation, about this at the HBR site of the original article, kicked off by my friend, Charlie Green. My friend Jack Malcolm expanded on the discussion in his post today. Wherever you land in the discussion, I think it’s important to recognize that “One Size Doesn’t Fit All.” That is, each customer buying situation is different. Sales people need a rich array of approaches and tools to intercept the customer in their buying process, align with them and to sell. Helping the customer identify new opportunities to […]
“The End Of Solutions Sales”
In the latest issue of the Harvard Business Review, the folks at the Conference Board have declared “The End Of Solutions Sales.” Upon reading this, I immediately thought of Mark Twain’s quote, “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” While, I suppose, it stirs up the pot to declare the end of Solutions Selling and may sell more workshops or consulting services, in the end I think it is wordsmithing and positioning. Instead of this, we should be driving greater clarity in how sales people can create great value for their customers. That’s by helping them identify and solve problems. […]