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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
Innovation In Sales, An Oxymoron?
Innovation is a hot topic these days. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, particularly in selling. There’s a lot going on in selling. Sales 2.0 generates a lot of discussion. There are interesting tools in the Sales 2.0 category that help improve effectiveness and efficiency in selling. In the past year, there has been hype around Provocative Selling. I’ve taken the view that this is just another approach to consultative, customer focused, or solutions oriented selling. Social media is changing the way we engage with customers, raising the bar on their expectations of us. However, with all the talk […]
Sometimes I’m Ashamed To Be A Sales Person
If you follow this blog, you know I like talking to sales people trying to sell me something. It’s always interesting to be on the customer side and to be able to look at how I am being sold to. Often, I talk to really great sales people. They are professional, they listen well, they execute their sales process well. Even though I may not buy, I’ll find a way to point those people to an opportunity, or at least thank them for their professionalism. Then I get the calls like I got today. The call actually started well, it […]
Are You Selling Within Your Own Company?
Anthony Iannarino’s post on Selling Inside reminded me of some great advice a mentor gave early in my sales career at IBM. He said, “Sometimes you have to sell stronger within your own company than you do with the customer.” It took me a while to understand that, but it’s been important throughout my career. As sales people, we are driven to connect with our customers and to get them to buy our products. There are few areas that I know of where we can do this as lone gunslingers. Most every sales professional I know relies on strong support […]
Doing Your Homework!
This is one of those blogs where I get on my soap box and rant a little bit. I got off the phone with a sales person–someone who came highly recommended by a colleague. We had set the call up some time ago. He had sent me some introductory information about his company and product, and we had our call. After we went through what appeared to be the obligatory two questions (How are you? Did you get a chance to review the materials I sent you?), he went into heavy duty product selling mode. I suppose I was a […]
Sales Smack, Talk Shoe, and Other Topics
This post is to let you know about a couple of interesting things coming up. My friend, Jim Keenan, has started an interesting event, Sales Smack. It is an open discussion of issues important to sales professionals. Jim has honored me by asking me to participate in the discussions. The goal is to have a discussion every 2 weeks, at 7:00 PM Eastern. Each session, we will have a variety of participants and will be tackling a different topic. Tomorrow, January 12, the inaugural session will discuss, “Is Sales Responsible For A Company’s Growth.” As you might expect, I preparing […]
The Commoditization Of Relationships
The other day, I was having breakfast with a great friend, one of the most talented marketing executives I have encountered. Unwittingly, we had the same thought on our minds, ending up talking through breakfast—unfortunately, with no good ideas on dealing with it. Thought I would share it here, getting your views about the issue. Both of us are very active, both individually and with our respective companies in leveraging social media/networking tools, many of the marketing automation, Sales/Web 2.0 tools, and other tools. We each are also on the receiving end of seemingly endless communications, through email, the various […]