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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
Dear Mr. Customer: I Try Hard To Be A Great Sales Professional……
Last week, I met with a sales team I’d been coaching on a large opportunity. For the most part, they were doing everything right. They had focused on identifying all the critical business impact, change management, and related issues facing the customer. They had presented a business based solution, presenting a sound business case, great implementation plan, and a compelling reason for the customer to take action. They had identified some potential legal and compliance issues that could have a serious impact on the customer—financially and within the perceptions of the community the customer served. They demonstrated how they would […]
Buyer Persona’s — A Great Starting Point For Sales!
I’m a tremendous fan of Buyer Personas*. Anyone who isn’t leveraging this concept heavily in all marketing and sales programs is missing a tremendous opportunity. Strong buyer personas is the foundation for marketing programs, content development, and nurturing potential prospects. Buyer Persona’s are a great starting point for sales people. After my post, “You Need To Know What’s Keeping Them Up At Night,” I got a lot of questions on “how do you figure all of this out?” Buyer Persona’s help you begin to understand this. They help you understand a number of things that impact people in the role […]
Are We UnderPerforming Our Potential?
Last month’s Harvard Business Review focus on, of all things, Failure. One of the most interesting articles was “Why Leaders Don’t Learn From Success.” It’s absolutely a must read for everyone—but if you have been (or think you have been) very successful in the past few years, do yourselves a favor and read it. There are three major issues identified: When we succeed, we tend to give too much credit to our talents, our model, or strategy, and too little to external factors and luck. Success can make us so overconfident that we believe we don’t need to change anything. […]
Sales IS A Numbers Game!
Sales is a numbers game–there is absolutely no doubt about that. Our “numbers” are well publicized throughout the organization, they are indelibly imprinted in our minds, (at least annually). We are driven to meet our goals–to make the numbers. High performance sales is a Smart Numbers Game! As with, every sales person, high performers are numbers driven, but they look at numbers differently. High performers don’t blindly dial 100’s of numbers a week, with mind numbing pitches for “Can I Have 15 Minutes Of Your Time?” They know that is a low payoff activity and a waste of their time. […]
Succeeding, Winning, Exceeding Expectations—And Accomplishing Remarkable Things!
50% of sales people failed to achieve their quotas last year. We all faced tough markets, radically changing customer expectations, and new global competitors. But that’s no excuse to accept missing goal. In contrast to those 50% of sales people that failed to achieve quotas, in high performing sales organizations, over 80% of their sales people met or exceeded their goals — a remarkable difference. On May 9-13, there will be a remarkable event–remarkable in several senses. It is the 2011 Sales and Marketing Success Conference. A 5 day series of presentations and discussions by 36 of the top thought […]
“Can I Have 15 Minutes Of Your Time?”
The phone rings, I answer, the voice on the other end asks, “Can I speak to the person in your company who is responsible for _______________ decisions?” You can fill in the blank with about anything, today it was printers, a few days ago IT Networking, another time recruiting, then telecommunications, banking, health insurance, then………. Hesitantly, I respond, “I guess that’s me.” The voice at the other end, “I’m from ______________, next week I am meeting with companies in your area to present our technologies (solutions) on ____________. I’d like to spend 15 minutes with you to tell you about […]