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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
Collaboration
Collaboration is the new buzzword. It seems everywhere we turn, we read about collaboration–it’s critical to Sales 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and just about everything else that’s 2.0. Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the collaboration soapbox as well, but I wish the focus wasn’t just on Shiny New Collaboration Toys. I’m attracted to any article that has collaboration in the title, but am often disappointed because it is another article on technology–whether a new telepresence approach (Yes Cisco, your advertising is working), a new software/social networking tool, or something else. These are interesting and provide new ways to extend the way […]
Who Are Sales Process Metrics For?
Over the past several weeks, I’ve sat in on a number of interesting webinars on sales productivity. Inevitably the focus is on tools the sales manager can use to monitor their teams, track performance and improve effectiveness. Whether it is a new Sales 2.0 tool or using CRM, the focus is on sales managers. While I think this is terrific, where is the Sales Person in the discussion? Don’t get me wrong, key aspects of the manager’s job is to track performance, coach for improvement, and manage the business. But I think we miss a major opportunity by not focusing […]
Are Questions Only An Excuse To Tee Up Your Pitch?
The cold call started pretty well. Someone called, he had a good premise for the sales call, he had done his homework, he asked a question……. That’s where it went terribly off course. I had barely begun my response when he interupted, “Our company is involved in those areas as well, this is what we do…..” “Hold on,” I sputtered, “…and we have a lot of experience in working with companies like yours…..” he went on. “But, but…..” I tried to interrupt. “….I really think you will like what we do, here’s why….” he continued. Normally, at this point I […]
Doubling Sales Productivity — Be Prepared!
Improving sales productivity is the Holy Grail of all sales professionals, executives, Sale 2.0 solution providers and every sales consultant. We look for all sorts of tools and mechanisms to improve productivity. Sometimes, it becomes very gimmicky. Maybe we are making it too complicated. I was apalled in reading IDC’s Sales Enablement Service’s recent survey of IT Buyers. In this survey, 54% of IT Buyers said sales people were unprepared for their initial customer meetings. For those seeking a silver lining, the 2010 survey indicated 54% were unprepared versus 57% for the 2009 survey. Nothing to be proud of. While […]
What’s The Future Of Buying?
To say things are changing is almost trite, with the confluence of the new economy, globalization, social media, globalization, new and different competition, new and different growth opportunities, we must rethink everything we do in business. For some time, I have been thinking, reading, researching, and talking a lot about the future of selling. Where are we going as a profession? What’s the next step function change in how we sell and create value for our customers? What are the critical skills, processes, methods and tools we need to embrace to perform at a higher level? There have been some […]
Please Mr/Ms Customer, Let Me Waste Your Time, I’ve Earned It!
Last week, I wrote about inspirational customer service. This weekend, the pendulum swung to the other extreme. I went out looking for new cars. No blog is long enough to contain my rant on how disfunctional the process of buying a car is, so I won’t go through the whole thing, but focus on a few low points-and not the lowest, I have to keep this reasonably civil. On Saturday, I went to look for a new car, I had settled on 4 different models, done my research, knew what I wanted in each and what a fair price might be. […]