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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
Does “Being Yourself” Count As A Sales Technique?
I few days ago, I started a discussion with “What Are The 3 Characteristics That Set Great Sales People Apart?” followed by “How Important Are ‘Techniques’ To Sales?” I hadn’t meant to turn this into a series (or saga), but the discussion has been very interesting. For me, it has been a bit of a journey of discovery. I’ve always had an aversion to what I call “techniques” — those 68 closing techniques, the persuasion technique and so forth. At the same time, there are techniques or tools that I have found very helpful, questioning approaches, storytelling as a means […]
How Important Are “Techniques” To Sales?
The other day, I wrote a piece, What Are The 3 Characteristics That Set Great Sales People Apart? It stimulated quite a reaction as people started suggesting their ideas. I was surprised by the focus of a number of people on the “right techniques.” These comments started to make me wonder about my own belief system and biases. I guess I have a very negative reaction to the concept of sales techniques. When I think of these techniques, I think of sales tricks and manipulation. I did a little research: Persuasion techniques like, “the art of repetition,” “the foot in […]
What Are The 3 Characteristics That Set Great Sales People Apart?
Last Friday, I had the privilege of being interviewed by an executive on critical issues in buying and selling. It was a great conversation, but one of his questions stuck in my mind. He asked me, “What are the 3 characteristics that set great sales people apart from others?” I responded, “Oh, there are so many……” He interupted, saying, “Dave, you only get to choose the top 3, no more.” This caused me to pause, any of us can come up with lists of characteristics of great sales people, sometimes it’s half a dozen characteristics, often a dozen, sometimes the […]
Buyer Beware — Seller Be Aware!
I guess as a blogger, twitter user, and sometime pundit, it’s natural to get into a lot of conversations about the impact of Social Media, and the Internet for that matter, on buying and selling. In the past several days, I’ve had a number of conversations with people all over the world. “How do we leverage social media to sell?” “What should we be doing with social media?” “What is social selling?”I have to admit that I feel a little awkward in these discussions, I don’t by any means consider myself a social media expert—it seems, I’ve just learned how […]
Games Sales People Play — The Challenge Of Activity Metrics
A few weeks, ago, my post on The Most Used – Useless Metric In Sales created an avalanche of comments and emails. Many of you commented on a variety of “useless metrics” you have experienced. One of the most popular categories of “useless metrics” was Activity metrics. Activity metrics are very popular, they’re easy to establish and measure. There are all sorts of activity metrics: Number of outgoing/incoming phone calls handled per day/week, number of customer meetings per day/week, number of proposals, number of sales opportunities in the funnel — the list is endless. The problem with activity metrics is […]
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 […]