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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
What Do Formula 1 Drivers and Great Sales Professionals Have In Common?
For sometime, I’ve been haranguing readers about the importance of the selling process. Even in a recent post, I considered use of the sales process as a condition of continued employment. I’m not softening my position on this, the sales process is the cornerstone to personal and organizational performance excellence in selling. However, the posts have generated a good amount of discussion and emails. Some have suggested the process removes creativity and innovation. Some have said the highly scripted nature of a sales process is not conducive to the highly customer focused/responsive approach to selling we need to be executing. […]
Three Card Monte–Social Media Style
Everyone knows the classic con game, called Three Card Monte. It’s a card game where the dealer rearranges cards (usually on a cardboard box to aid in escaping) in an attempt to confuse the player on the location of a specific card. The player guesses which of three cards is the designated card, if he is right, he wins the bet. It’s a classic con, in Manhattan, you can see it on virtually any street corner in midtown. It’s an easy game, it’s easy to be sucked in, and the dealer always wins. There are three roles in Three Card […]
Your Selling Process–It’s Not Optional, It’s A Condition Of Continued Employment
Everyday I speak with sales executives and professionals about how to improve sales, both driving more sales and improving overall productivity and effectiveness. One of the first things I ask them about is their sales process: Is it current? Are they using it? Not surprisingly, this is where the “Well, uh……kinda sorta….” I’ve written about this issue extensively, I won’t repeat myself. If you want, re-read the article, But We Have A Sales Process……. I’d like to focus on another issue–critical for sales executives in leading the organization, critical for all sales professionals in maximizing their performance in the organization. […]
Collaboration
Collaboration is the new buzzword. It seems everywhere we turn, we read about collaboration–it’s critical to Sales 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and just about everything else that’s 2.0. Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the collaboration soapbox as well, but I wish the focus wasn’t just on Shiny New Collaboration Toys. I’m attracted to any article that has collaboration in the title, but am often disappointed because it is another article on technology–whether a new telepresence approach (Yes Cisco, your advertising is working), a new software/social networking tool, or something else. These are interesting and provide new ways to extend the way […]
Who Are Sales Process Metrics For?
Over the past several weeks, I’ve sat in on a number of interesting webinars on sales productivity. Inevitably the focus is on tools the sales manager can use to monitor their teams, track performance and improve effectiveness. Whether it is a new Sales 2.0 tool or using CRM, the focus is on sales managers. While I think this is terrific, where is the Sales Person in the discussion? Don’t get me wrong, key aspects of the manager’s job is to track performance, coach for improvement, and manage the business. But I think we miss a major opportunity by not focusing […]
Are Questions Only An Excuse To Tee Up Your Pitch?
The cold call started pretty well. Someone called, he had a good premise for the sales call, he had done his homework, he asked a question……. That’s where it went terribly off course. I had barely begun my response when he interupted, “Our company is involved in those areas as well, this is what we do…..” “Hold on,” I sputtered, “…and we have a lot of experience in working with companies like yours…..” he went on. “But, but…..” I tried to interrupt. “….I really think you will like what we do, here’s why….” he continued. Normally, at this point I […]