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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
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 […]
Are You Playing For Table Stakes, Or Are You Differentiated?
It used to be great products that set us apart—more features, functions, bells and whistles. Products are no longer the differentiators—at least on an ongoing basis. Global competition keeps raising the bar almost on a daily basis. Products are important, we have to keep investing in them, but product leadership is not likely to be a sustainable differentiator. It used to be quality—our quality set us apart and caused us to win. Quality is no longer a differentiator—for the most part, it’s pretty much a level playing field—at least the customers throw out the bad quality vendors, so only vendors […]
You Need To Know What’s Keeping Them Up At Night!
“What’s keeping you up at night?” It’s a classic question many sales people use to start identifying their customers’ needs and priorities. In reality, however, it’s a terrible starting point. It may mean, you haven’t done your homwork in preparing for the call, particularly with senior executives. Great sales professionals study their customers and prospects deeply. They understand the industry, they understand their customer’s customers, they understand the key strategies and goals of each of their customers. As much as possible, they study and learn what’s happening within their organizations. Great sales people are able to put themselves in their […]