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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 You Selling To Where Your Customer Is Going To Be?
Wayne Gretsky attributed part of his greatness as a hockey player to, “always skating to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is.” His idea is a good thing for us to think about as sales professionals. Too often, as sales people, I think we focus too much on where the customer is now, what are their current problems, what are their needs, how do we present something that gets them to buy now. We struggle at selling–the project may not be a priority, funds aren’t allocated, we get close, but no sale. I think much […]
Why Didn’t You Buy From Me?
“Why Didn’t You Buy From Me?” This six and a half word sentence is probably the most difficult, but one of the most important questions a sales person can ever ask. It’s a question we tend to avoid asking because it is an admission of failure — tough for any of us. However, not asking it is a bigger failure, but we tend not to recognize this. I’m constantly amazed by the lengths people will go through to avoid asking this question. We lose an order, too often, we just put a “reason code” in the CRM system and do […]
Performance Management — The Measured Mile
In my last post, I talked about the importance for managers manage performance in their organizations, not ignoring performance issues. In this post, I want to go into establishing the performance improvement plan and putting someone on a “measured mile.” The performance improvement plan is emotionally tough for everyone involved—the sales manager, the poor performing sales person, even others in the organization. It’s important, however, that everyone enters this with the same goal in mind, the objective of the performance improvement plan is a successful outcome. Let me repeat this, the objective of the performance improvement plan is a successful […]
Performance Management–Are You Looking The Other Way?
At times, sales managers have to put under performers on the proverbial “measured mile.” That’s when the sales person has a period of time to meet specific goals, improve performance, or face the potential of losing their job. Typically, the manager and sales person sit down, they establish specific goals, a plan of action, and a schedule under which the sales person can redeem himself, getting back on target. The manager and sales person establish what each will do to ensure a successful outcome. At least that’s the theory of the performance improvement plan. Most often, however, it never comes […]
Sales Process—Did You Develop It In A Dark Room?
There was an interesting comment by Mohamed Saad at the Future Selling Institute LinkedIn Group. Mohamed raised an outstanding point about “Sales processes being defined in a closed room, away from the sales people…” His comment really resonated with me. Too often, I see organizations making real mistakes in developing their sales processes. Some years ago, a very large client of mine had developed a sales process. Since it was a “process,” the process experts in the company had to take charge. They did a lot of analysis, they did talk to sales people, but they went into a back […]
If Our People Fail, We Have Failed As Managers
In our Future Selling Institute Office Hours last Friday, my friend, Jonathan Farrington, made a comment in a discussion about coaching. He said, as managers, if our people fail, we have failed as managers. It’s an important statement that deserves much more in the way of discussion. As managers, our job is to maximize the performance of our organizations and each individual within the organization. We do this through a number of mechanisms, including: We have strategies and tactics in place that clearly position us within our target markets and customers. We keep them current. We have processes, tools, training, […]