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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
Selling Is The Easy Part, It’s The Buying That’s Difficult
I was reviewing a sales situation with a client. He knew exactly what he needed to be doing. He had a good understanding of the customer’s needs, he knew who he was competing against, he had clearly mapped the critical things he needed to do. I asked him what concerned him most. He responded, with some frustration, “The customer just can’t seem to get their act together, they keep slowing down my sales process!” He went on to describe how disorganized the customer was. The user wasn’t moving forward as fast as they could–the day to day distractions of their […]
My Name Is Not “Occupant Or Current Resident”
I received a surprising email the other day. It was from some “expert” in selling. The approach surprised me, I would have thought an “expert” might have known better. The email is one of those we see too often. It was addressed to the sender–clearly the recipients were all listed in the “bcc” field. The email went on to ask my help in promoting something this individual was doing. It also asked for the courtesy of a response—so I guess in some sense, this post is my response, though I really don’t think that courtesy was earned. Given the tools […]
The Handwritten Prospecting Letter
I’ve been tracking some discussions about old school approaches to engaging customers. There are a number people talking about the power of handwritten thank you cards and notes (I’m a real fan of this myself). One of my clients has done a study and has found brief handwritten introductory prospecting notes, with hand addressed envelopes are very effective. For select prospects, they send well researched and handwritten notes–unique to each individual. These are never more than a few paragraphs. They seem to have high impact and generate good responses. Leave it to some clever direct marketer to take this to […]
Innovation In Sales
Innovation In Sales—sounds a little like an oxymoron, something like sales intelligence. I was intrigued by the question my friend Lauren Harper posed on Focus. Innovation is critical. The pace at which customers are changing the way they buy, demands rapid change and innovation. Without it, we will be left behind. We will become uncompetitive, our products and services will be commoditized, we will be left to fulfilling orders at the lowest possible price. Yet innovation is tough–or we make it tougher than it need be. I think the problem is that we have a tendency to associate innovation with […]
How Do All The Pieces Fit Together?
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations with very interesting people. Some have been providers of Sales 2.0 technology solutions, some performance improvement professionals, a few consultants, and others. The conversations have wandered over very broad spaces on the topics of sales, sales performance improvement, and sales effectiveness. At the end of most of those conversations, I’ve had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I’ve been incredibly impressed by the power of some of the solutions these people are talking about. Some are really innovative and can have a great impact on sales professionals. But […]
Either….Or…..
Management is about making choices and setting priorities. We have to choose to do somethings, choosing not to do others. We have to set priorities and maintain focus. Choosing everything, setting everything to a top priority, consciously or by default (otherwise known as piling on), is a sure path to failure. Having said that, there are areas in confronting “either/or” choices where the only answer is, we have to do both. There’s a great discussion on Focus that surfaces this issue. It poses the question, “Should we focus on A players or strong lead management engines?” I think the answer […]