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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
Behavioral Steering, Influence Or Manipulation?
We are in the business of behavioral steering. Whether it’s working with our customers, collaborating with peers, or as leaders working with our teams, we constantly seek to shape behaviors. Sometimes gently, often deliberately, sometimes without even knowing that we are doing it. Behavioral steering is the process of designing choices, contexts, or presenting information intended to drive certain actions or outcomes. We use it in helping customers make a buying decision, coaching our people to more effectively achieve their goals, influencing our peers in developing and executing strategies. And others steer us, to influence our own actions and behaviors. […]
Just Good Enough, The New Standard For Performance?
When did, “just good enough,” become the standard for performance? Too many sellers and leaders seem to be going through the motions. They are putting in the hours, many measuring their success by the hours they work, rather than the results produced. Seeing inspirational or even driven performance has become a rarity. Mediocrity seems to be the norm. It’s not that people aren’t busy, they are overwhelmed and overloaded. It’s not that people aren’t achieving their goals–they are doing what they can. They may be hitting their numbers, they are attending meetings, doing their activities. I see uninspired customer meetings–following […]
Urgency Alignment
Recently, I was having a conversation with a group of sellers about ICPs and qualification. During the conversation, we were trying to refine their targeting and qualification. They were relatively sophisticated, but something wasn’t quite working as effectively as they hoped. I introduced the idea of “Urgency Alignment.” I asked, are you and the customer aligned in the sense of urgency to achieve a shared goal? The ensuing discussion was fascinating. The sellers had a high sense of urgency to close the deal–and to do it “this quarter.” We talked about how that was irrelevant to the customer. They are […]
“I’m Wasting My Time Being ‘Problem Focused!'”
Sometimes, I sound like a broken record (Hmmm, I need to update that metaphor). Selling isn’t about pitching solutions. It’s about helping customers understand and solve their problem. It’s about helping the customer develop and maintain change urgency. This shift drives higher levels of customer engagement, builds greater trust, and higher win rates. It reduces buying/sales cycles by 30-40%. But when I talk about this, I often get pushback from sellers. It usually boils down to this, “I can’t afford to take the time to help customers understand and define their problems. What if I do all that work, and […]
The Deck Was Never The Point!
I was struck by a LinkedIn post with the opening line: “Microsoft just made QBR prep obsolete. And CSMs everywhere should be celebrating.” The rest of the article talked about how Microsoft has integrated AI into it’s products, eliminating all the work needed to prepare the charts for a QBR. And there is post after post, outlining the same principles. We no longer have to do pre-call research and prep, there are AI tools that do all of it for us, presenting us the call plan a few minutes before we make the call. Or after the call, we no […]
How You Sell To Me Shows How You Will Sell For Me…
As I clean out my inbox, texts, social messages, I often ask myself the question, “Do they actually ever read what they are sending me? Do they care about how they are representing themselves? Are they establishing the impression they want?” Your inboxes probably look the same as mine. You are inundated with people who have perfected outreach and engagement. Endless offers of, “we can find more leads, we can build your LinkedIn presence, we can bring you more opportunities, we can be your outsourced prospecting……” You probably have them memorized. To them personalization is a name, the company name—and […]