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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
Talking About Price!
There have been a number of interesting blog posts and discussions going on about when it’s appropriate to talk about price. Most sales people tend to want to defer the pricing discussion until very late in the sales process. Some for good reason, some just out of habit–but with no real rationale at all. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how to answer that question. I tend to defer the investment discussion until very late in the sales cycle. Since we sell consulting services, it’s impossible to know the price we will charge until we understand the scope of […]
What If You Sold What Customers Wanted To Buy?
We know what we want to sell. We’ve ben trained, we have all our brochures and presentations. We struggle and pitch. We have the killer solution, the customer seems to like it. We’re very close, but we struggle. The customer just isn’t buying. We seem to be stuck. I see this often. A client was struggling with a big proposal. There seemed to be a huge gap in what the customer was willing to pay for and what was being proposed. The client was struggling, it seemed to close the deal, they’d have to discount very significantly. In reviewing their proposal, […]
The Meeting
You’ve spent all this time trying to get through to the prospect. You’ve finally reached the customer and set up the first meeting. You’re getting yourself ready– you’ve got one shot, you need to maximize your impact. Most sales people would grab a briefcase full of brochures, case studies and testimonials. They would make sure they had the latest PowerPoint presentations on their computers or Ipads, ready to pitch. For some, preparation for the meeting will be done as they sit in the lobby waiting for the customer. For others, they feel they’ve done so many sales calls, they’ll just […]
What’s Your Approach To Managing Performance?
As leaders and sales managers, a key aspect of our jobs is to manage performance. I find lots of different approaches people use, but at the core the approaches tend to reflect two completely different views of performance. (Stuart Cross has an interesting perspective, looking at 4 views–we’re actually not far apart, I’d encourage you to watch his short video on this.) I find managers who are problem solving oriented and others who are developmental oriented. The problem solving oriented manager is focused on today’s performance issues and addressing them. They look for shortcomings in current performance—someone not making their […]
Remembering
I’m a little surprised that I’m writing about 9/11. It’s a big departure from my normal ramblings. This morning, I had no intention of writing about it. But I found myself remembering. It’s one of those things many of us speak about–an event we remember for all our lives. There are a handful that I always remember, this is one. The memories are so vivid. On the morning of 9/11/2001, I was at work in my office–the radio was on in the background. I was catching up on things, The night before, I had just returned from a two week […]
Performance Management Friday — Average Transaction Value
Over the past few weeks, I’ve focused on various pipeline/funnel metrics that sales people should consider in assessing their own productivity. In the post, Ideal Pipeline Volume, I talked about Average Transaction Value as a key performance indicator. I want to dive into this more deeply. Just for a quick review, three of the greatest levers in hitting your goals are: Increasing Your Win Rate, Reducing Sales Cycle, and Increasing Average Transaction Value. Of these three, perhaps the easiest to achieve is increasing the average transaction value. Too often we defeat ourselves and our ability to achieve our numbers. Every discount we […]