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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
A Quote Is Not The Objective!
I’ve noticed an interesting, yet disturbing phenomenon recently. It’s sales people who think their job is to provide a quote or a proposal. Let’s not forget, our jobs–what we get measure and compensated on is not quotes, it’s orders! What’s important to our companies is the revenue we get from fulfilling an order! In smaller organizations, inexperienced with selling, it’s understandable that people get confused, mistaking a customer’s interest in pricing with purchase intent. However, I’m seeing this in larger organizations in which many of the activities seem to be oriented around number of quotes issued. Maybe it’s driven by […]
We Have The Opportunity Of A Lifetime
Recently, I listened to an interview of Seth Godin by Michael Hyatt. It’s an absolutely brilliant interview, but that’s not what I want to write about. Seth used a phrase that I want to co-opt for this blog post. He said, “We Have The Opportunity Of A Lifetime.” I’m captivated by that phrase. As sales and marketing professionals, I think we have the opportunity of a lifetime. My friend, Dave Stein, has said sales has changed more in the past 3 years than through our entire history. I’ve written that we are at an inflection point—being driven by the customer. […]
The Customer Service Call
Perhaps I’m a little grumpy, anxious to get an early start to the weekend, but I had to get this off my chest. I just hung up from a “customer service call.” It was from a Fortune 100 company. Here’s how it went: Customer Service Rep (CSR): “Hi, I’m so and so from such and such company. I’m calling to follow up on a warranty repair we did.” Dave (puzzled): “I’m a little confused, we haven’t had a warranty repair recently, how can I help you?” CSR: “We replaced this part on this device, we just wanted to make sure […]
“We Want To Be Your Partner!” Another Closing Technique?
Partnering has been in vogue for the past few years. It seems as though every sales person wants to “partner” with their customers. Marketers talk about partnering, consultants want to be everyone’s partner. Whatever happened to valued vendor-customer relationships? Whatever happened to “I want to provide you a quality solution, that fulfills all your requirements, at a fair price, with great customer service.” What about the customer who just wants a dependable supplier that meets their commitments? Somehow just selling to a customer who is buying is no longer sufficient. We have to talk about a much deeper form of […]
Just Do It!
Nike really has it right with Just Do It! We can find endless excuses for not doing something—making those prospecting calls, finishing that report, doing that forecast, updating our CRM system……. There’s always an excuse or a rationalization for not doing something: Marketing materials aren’t complete. We don’t have all the information we need. We have other things that we need to (or prefer to) spend our time on. The customer doesn’t want to meet with us. We don’t have things perfect yet. We just need more preparation. The dog ate my sales call plan……. My computer died….. I have […]
Who Is Our Customer — A View From The Fashion Industry
It might come as a surprise to some of my readers that I consult within the fashion industry — it must be my keen sense of style they want to leverage. It really is difficult to be an icon of fashionability and coolness……. I’ve always admired the connection with the customer that my fashion industry clients have–it’s something all of us can learn from. These clients are always trying to understand what’s “hot” with their customers, what drives them, what are the great trends or fads they will buy. They focus intently on understanding “who” their customers are. One of […]