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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
I’ve Succumbed–I’m Talking About Sales 2.0
I’ve always hated the term, Sales 2.0. I don’t know what it means, to me it’s always a conversation about great new tools and software systems, but not really about selling. But I’ve succumbed. On Tuesday, August 24, 1:00 PM EDT, Tom Scontras, VP of Marketing for Glance Networks and I are having a discussion: Learn The 3 Keys To Making The Successful Shift to Sales 2.0! It would be great to have you join us in the discussion–click the link to register: Register. We’ll be talking about Sales 2.0 — as much as the whole concept bothers me. Why […]
Prisoners Of Our Own Experiences
I meet with executives everyday. They have great knowledge about their businesses–they can cite everything about their strategies, priorities, goals, key metrics. They study their competitors incessantly, understanding their strategies and positioning. They study their markets, and the best study their customers. They have deep insight about everything in their industry. But when I talk to them, a critical issue they always bring up is, “How do we innovate?” “How do we start thinking out of the box?” One of the problems with innovating and thinking out of the box is that we are prisoners of our own experience. Most of […]
Professional Salesperson — Business Professional?
The other day, I wrote an article, Appointments With Sales People Fall Short Of Executive Expectations. In it I cited data from a Forrester Research report on executive perspectives of sales people’s ability to understand their business needs, priorities, and issues. I wanted to extend the discussion, focusing on a topic I’ve found a little nebulous, business acumen. There are training programs on business acumen, programs that help you understand the structure of business, how they work. There are MBA programs many sales people take to understand more about how businesses operate. Those are all great, sales people should seek […]
Appointments With Sales People Fall Short Of Executive Expectations
Last Week I wrote about “We Have To Call At The Top,” suggesting the concept of right level selling. There are many times when calling at the “C” level is critical for our sales efforts, yet we struggle to get appointments with these executives. I was interested to read a Forrester Research report on this topic, presenting the executive perspective. Only 15% of the “C” level executives surveyed felt their meetings with sales people were valuable and lived up to their expectations. They went further, based on the outcome of the initial meeting, only 7% would accept follow-on meetings. No […]
It’s Not Your Close That Causes You To Win!
We spend a lot of time talking about closing. We focus on doing a great final presentation or proposal. We worry about finding the right way to close–how to ask for the order in a compelling way. Frankly, it’s too late–sales are not won or lost at the close, they are won or lost much earlier in the sales process–and– unfortunately, where we probably spend the least time. Sales are won and lost during qualification and discovery. Yet these are probably the areas we focus on least. Qualification—or as I prefer to look at it, “vicious disqualification.” Too often we […]
Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness — Well Almost!
I always appreciate Tibor Shanto’s blog posts on cleaning out the pipeline, focusing on real business. He always seems to find the right time to remind us to do this, In January, he encouraged us to Clear Out The Clutter, can’t start the New Year with garbage in our funnel. In March, he reminded us of Spring Cleaning. I’ve been anxiously waiting his third quarter post and reminder. I agree with Tibor, over the course of time, sales people tend to let their pipelines get cluttered. Opportunities that looked good a couple of months ago are languishing. Deals we hoped […]