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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
It Doesn’t Matter What We Know, It’s What The Buyer Needs
Companies spend $100’s of millions every year in training sales people about their products and solutions. As sales people, we are proud of our knowledge–naturally eager to demonstrate it to customers. Likewise, people in our company who may support us–developing sales and marketing materials, resources we may leverage to make calls an support our sales efforts—everyone is excited and passionate about the solutions we have and the great value we can bring to our customers. All of this is meaningless to the customer. The customer doesn’t care about our products and solutions. The customer doesn’t care about our enthusiasm about […]
Purposefulness–Getting What We Want versus Getting What We Get
As sales professionals, we all know what we want—-We want to win the deal, We want to beat the competitor, We want to make our quotas. We want the commission checks, We want the bonus. Ask any sales person, they’ll be very clear about what they want. Often what we want is merely wishful thinking, instead of getting what we want, we get what we get. We try hard to win the deal, we can’t quite beat the competitor, we missed our quota this year, but we’ll do better next year, the excuses can go on. Great sales professionals get […]
When Customers Really Want To Buy–Perishable Demand!
A couple of weeks ago, I really needed to make a relatively major purchase in support of a project I was doing for a client. I did my due diligence, found a few alternatives, found the solution I really wanted and called a salesperson. I got his voicemail, left a message outlining my urgent requirement. I also sent an email, saying in wanted to give him my money as quickly as possible. Then I waited….. and waited…. and waited….. I put another call in, another email, and waited… and waited… Needless to say, I went to my second alternative, it […]
Metrics, It’s All Relative
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece, What We Miss About Sales Metrics. In some of the discussions around that piece and in a number of separate discussions I’ve seen around the different sales communities, I’ve been amazed at some of the “zealotry” around metrics. There are a number of people, some self proclaimed guru’s, spending a lot of time about “the right metrics.” The suggestion is that there is only one way a certain metric should be measured, or certain metrics are mandatory, or….. It may be my stubbornness or my resistance to follow the “rules,” but […]
There’s More To The Discovery Process Than Identifying Needs!
After Qualifying, I believe the Discovery Phase of the sales process is the single most important part of the entire process. If executed well, it is where the customer lays out the road map for how the sales person can win the deal. Yet too often, sales people lose this opportunity, choosing to race through the process so they can get to Proposing and Closing–after all isn’t that what sales people are supposed to do–pitch and the famous, “always be closing.” Too often sales people use the Discovery Phase as just the part of the sales cycle where they understand […]
Principles Trump Process!
On Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking with my friend Charlie Green (as well as the rest of the group on Future Selling Insitute’s Office Hours). Charlie reminded me of a critical issue–I think I knew it, but it was unconscious. Charlie reminded me that leadership, and sales, is so complex that leading from principle is far more important than leading through process. Now that I’ve had a little time to reflect, it’s really critical that leaders understand and embrace this concept. When you think of the high levels of complexity, the pace of change, and the “unexplored” opportunities we […]