Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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 Key To Differentiation
Differentiation is critical to sales. It sets us apart, enabling our customers to distinguish between alternatives. In the absence of differentiation, it becomes difficult to win—often the differentiator is the price. Differentiation is increasingly difficult. Products increasingly look the same. Any alternative the customer is considering will probably do the job. There may be small differences in features, functions, capabilities–but these are wiped out with the next new release of a product from our competition. Company reputation—it’s size, strength, position in the market, and other things may be differentiators. But in today’s world of buying, it may not be. When […]
Customer Retention, Customer Service, Customer Experience The Rant Goes On
A couple of days ago, I ranted, in part, about my experience with my past computer supplier. We had depended on their computers for many years. Over the past several weeks, I have had power supply, battery problems and related issues. I’ve spent hours on the phone with customer service representatives. Each one of them has been very polite and reassuring, “We will get your problem solved!.” As we’ve been “solving” my problem, I get passed to different departments. Each department is apparently responsible for a particular aspect of the problem. One is software and overall system, one is hardware, […]
Customer Retention, A Rant
Business is tough everywhere. As sales professionals, we struggle to find business and meet our quotas. Losing business that you had previously won is tragic. Over the past couple of weeks, a couple of companies that I have done business with have lost mine–perhaps not forever, but as a potential buyer, I will be very cautious about doing business with them again. The first is one of our company’s banks. We keep accounts in a few banks around the world. Originally, we established multiple accounts to help make it easier for our people to do business. Each account is a […]
“Pissing On The Ashes”
My post yesterday stirred some discussion, Stop Spending So Much Time Coaching The Bottom Of The Funnel. I thought I’d expand on it to clarify my comments. Annually, I sit in hundreds of deal reviews. Too often, the focus is at the end of the cycle–we’ve put our offer forward, we’re doing everything we can to win (Funny how we seldom spend a lot of time doing reviews on opportunities that we believe we have won). In reality, there’s probably not much we can do at this point. We’ve failed to convince the customer and last minute tactics or shifts in […]
Stop Spending So Much Time Coaching The Bottom Of The Funnel
It’s approaching the end of the month and quarter. Everywhere I turn, people are focused on closing deals– focused on making the quarterly numbers. I sit in lot of reviews, managers and sales people are focused on deals at the bottom of the funnel. “How do we close this deal, what do we have to do to win, how do we get it this month?” The focus seems to be exclusively at the bottom of the funnel. It’s as though no other opportunity exists. This month will pass, we’ll enter a new month. Guess what happens—you’ve got it, the focus […]
No Room For Farmers!
Sales people are often described as Hunters or Farmers. Hunters have been characterized as chasing after new customers and new opportunities. Farmers focus on nurturing established accounts, keeping loyal customers, growing the business primarily through servicing the customer and growing the relationship. I’m not sure that model has ever been appropriate, but in today’s world of value creation, the model falls far short of what our customers need and what our own organizations need. Everybody Hunts! It’s the responsibility of each sales person to constantly develop their territories–whether it’s an industry segment, a geographic region, or a named account, everyone […]