Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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.
I read a fascinating Op Ed piece by Tom Friedman in the New York Times, Average Is Over. It’s a fascinating piece. As I reflected on the piece it struck me how important this concept is to professional selling. Friedman makes the point, “”…everyone needs to find their extra–their unique value contribution that makes them stand out…” Friedman is not writing about organizations, he’s writing about individuals, each of us. It’s a profound concept, understanding it is like discovering the secret decoder ring for sales success. In a buyer’s world, where too many products are undifferentiated, where the […]
Read MoreSales people are notoriously bad at writing things down and documenting things. I talk to thousands a year. When I start talking about documenting something–a deal plan, an account plan, territory, call plans, even a to-do list–all of a sudden you can see the resistance in their faces. They sit back, fold their arms. Most say nothing, but a few courageous one’s will say, “Dave, you don’t get it. I’m too busy to do this. I don’t have time to document these things–it’s too bureaucratic–I’ve got a plan, it’s in my head!” I’m used to this. I respond, “OK, I get […]
Read MoreLast week, I talked about the importance of Win Loss Analysis. No one questions doing win/loss analysis, in particular, we really worry about losses. There is a hidden performance and resource drain that can have a dramatic impact on our success. It’s the abandoned deal. Abandoned deals happen more frequently then we think–we usually don’t track them well. But they’re the deals that we’ve qualified and pursue proactively. We may abandon them for many reasons–we lose interest, our customers lose interest in us, we see that we can’t win, or any other reasons. Increasingly, however, I’m seeing the most damaging […]
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