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
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 […]
Our Customers Need To Do A Better Job Of Buying!
A few years ago, I was talking to a sales manager. He was expressing some frustration, “I’m doing my job of selling, my customers need to start doing a better job of buying!” When you think about it, there’s actually a lot of truth to that statement — at least the “doing a better job of buying” part. Our customers do a bad job of buying because they don’t know how to buy. With the exception of purchasing professionals, it’s not our customers jobs to buy, they focus on doing their jobs whether it is building products, running an operation, […]
We Have To Call At The Top!
Conventional sales “wisdom” encourages us to “call at the top.” Sales people constantly seek the “C-Level” executives, looking for anyone that has a “Chief” in their title–surprisingly customers are accommodating us with CMO’s, CIO’s, CFO’s and so forth. We’re taught to call at the top–things move faster, we don’t have to worry about all the users, just find the top executive, pitch them, and everything will go fast. I often coach sales people on their deal strategies. Always, I hear, “We need to figure out a way to get to the CIO,” or “If only we could get to the […]