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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 We Sell Is Different Than What We Install”
I started my career selling mainframe computers for IBM in the very late 70’s. One of the most important things I learned from one of my mentors at the time was, “What We Sell Is Different Than What We Install.” It’s a simple notion that is important for every sales person today–whether you sell cars, complex computer systems, complex services. We wrap a lot of fancy terminology around the concept, we call it Solution Selling, Consultative Selling, Provocative Selling, Insight Based Selling; but the underlying principles are the same. Let me go back to my days of selling computers. The […]
Lean Sales And Marketing — Standard Work
Last Friday, I kicked off a series of Friday posts I will be doing on Lean Sales and Marketing. At the core of lean is understanding an focusing on the essence of value creation and delivery. Lean attempts to eliminate any activities that do not contribute to value creation or delivery. A core principle within lean becomes defining “Standard Work.” Now I can imagine at least 70% of my readers shuddering at this concept. “There is nothing standard about what we do in sales, we have to be free to respond to the specific customer situation!” “Every customer situation is […]
The Sales Stack, Another View
My friend, Jim Keenan, wrote an interesting post on “The Sales Stack.” It offers an interesting view and initiates a great conversation on critical elements of developing and implementing a customer focused “Go To Market Strategy.” (Never mind that Jim displays his geekiness by talking about a “Layered OSImodel,” and me displaying mine by recognizing it.) An enterprise “Go To Market Strategy,” is a multilayered approach–each layer combining different elements of strategy and execution, complemented by systems, processes, tools, training, and people. I think the “layering” concept Jim presents is a great model for all of us to think about. […]
What Happens When We “Fix” The Sales Problem?
We have a revenue problem, we aren’t making the numbers, we aren’t growing, we rush to “fix the problem.” The first and most natural place to look (and blame) is sales. After all, sales is at the tip of the spear for generating revenue. Conscientious sales executives may be seeing the revenue trend before anyone else (problem pipelines, deals languishing or disappearing). They look at the performance of their teams, developing and executing strategies to improve results and performance. Typically, somewhere in this process, I get called in–either by the CEO or the top sales executive. The charter usually is, […]
Sales Early Warning System—Are You Leveraging It?
The second half of the year has just begun. Recently, I’ve been getting some panicky calls, “Our pipeline is a disaster! We need to find and close more deals!” What’s shocking to me is the level of “surprise,” being expressed by these very sophisticated business people. I have to admit, it’s a little difficult for me to understand the “surprise.” I wonder, “Why does this seem to be a surprise, do people have the right measurement systems in place?’” The pipeline is the single most powerful tool for individuals and managers, alike, to give insight into whether you are on […]
Sales And The Dreaded “P” Word
No this isn’t a post about pricing. There’s a “P” Word that strikes dread into the hearts of every sales person–it’s purchasing (or procurement). We all dread purchasing. We do everything we can to avoid them or work around them. All they are interested in is hammering us for price. All they want to do is slow us down, involve our competitors. Selling is tough enough as it is, but throw in purchasing and it becomes hopeless. It’s interesting to me, both sales and purchasing are trying to achieve the same thing for their companies, yet we tend to have […]