Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Is Social Media Really Anti-Social?
I was having a conversation with my friend, Gary Hart , no not that one—the @salesdujour one, about social media. Both of us are kind of old war horses, but have eagerly embraced social media. We reflected on networking as we knew it in the “good old days,” and social media today. Both of us were thinking that social media can actually be very anti-social. In the good old days of social networking, we had to rely on traditional means of networking—going to trade shows, conferences, picking up the phone and talking to people, and, God forbid, actually going to […]
The New Sales And Marketing, Playing A Different Game!
We all know that customers are changing the way they buy. It’s driving profound change in the way sales and marketing need to engage customers. Traditionally, we have been somewhat at odds with each other, working in our own silo’s. Marketing would conduct all sorts of programs to increase awareness, drive demand, generate leads. Marketing would hand those off to sales—sales would reject them, we would go back and forth a little, a few leads would be qualified and then sales took over, marketing’s job was finished, the ball was in sales court, it became sales’ responsibility to close the […]
Forecast Fatale
“The day was gray and wet in the city that seldom buys.” Not what I expected as the opening sentence in a book on Forecast Fatale. Techniques For Sales Professionals. Hmmm, what’s this about? I decided to read on, Brian Schlosser’s book Forecast Fatale captivated me. Brian’s lead character in guiding us through the trials and tribulations of a sales organization, needing to improve performance, is none other than business detective, Bart Steele. Written as a noir detective novel, with Bart Steele helping the CEO understand the challenges of a sales organization, as I read, I found myself reliving much […]
Bad Decisions–We Hate Them
“The customer just made a bad decision!” I hear this all the time from disappointed sales people, it’s always just after they learn they have lost a deal. Usually the rant goes on, “they don’t get it,” or even worse, “they’re stupid.” I understand the disappointment, no one likes to lose. We’re competitive and goal oriented. We want to win, we want to earn a commission. We should be upset at losing. Where I get unglued is blaming the customer, thinking the customer is wrong or even stupid. When I hear those statements, I can guess the deal was lost […]
Five Questions Revisited
The other day, I wrote about how my manager coached and trained me to be a better sales person. In the article titled 5 Questions, I described that in every deal review, she would ask me the same 5 questions. Initially, I didn’t have the answers to those questions, but not wanting to appear to be a dolt in front of her, after I realized what she was doing, I came to every meeting prepared to answer those 5 questions. When she saw that, she then asked another 5 Questions, again, I didn’t have the answers, we went through the […]
Five Questions
When I started my career in sales, I had the privilege of getting some of the best training available in selling–IBM’s Sales Training program was a combination of classroom and field based experiences, that few other organizations could match in terms of quality and experience. However, when I think about the most valuable training I got in my first years at IBM, it was from the weekly sessions and reviews with my sales manager. I’d sit down with her once a week, she’d start reviewing the deals I was working on. She would take one opportunity and ask me 5 questions about […]