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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
You Lose Because Of What You Don’t Do
Over the past few days, I’ve been participating in a loss review with one of my clients. It was a painful loss, it was a major opportunity, with a prestigious customer. The winner would lock up the business for the foreseeable future. My client had been pursuing this opportunity for over a year. The sale was for a relatively complex piece of capital equipment. The support teams had done many demonstrations and tests, they had made modifications to the base software to support customer requirements. Through the entire process, they were neck to neck with the competition. In the end, they were even slightly […]
Are You Playing At The Top Of Your Game?
I know, I know, we use way too many sports metaphors to talk about selling. But we really can learn a lot by watching high performing athletes in some of the most important sports events.This past weekend was packed with some of my favorite sports, the finals at Wimbledon, the World Cup, the start of the Tour de France, and toss in a few nice golf tournaments. Watching them provoked some thoughts: You can’t be successful without the support of your team: Sales is a team sport–even if you sell by yourself. the days of the “lone wolf” are gone […]
May I Speak To Ms. Company Inc?
I got a really interesting email today–actually, I get these emails periodically from various organizations. Today’s was from a very large company that we’ve done business with before (we are a customer of the company). The email was very personal, it started: Dear Dave………. It continued with an interesting message about our relationship, introducing me to new products and capabilities. Overall, it was a pretty good letter. At the end, it was signed by: “Company, Inc.” (OK, I’m chickening out, I’m not mentioning the name of the company—actually, I get these types of letters from a number of organizations). Hmm, […]
Are You Selling Within Your Own Company?
I’m constantly surprised by how poorly many sales people communicate within their own organizations. Sales people complain, “I’m not getting the information I need to finalize my proposal to the customer,” “My customer isn’t getting the service levels I committed,” “I’m not getting the support I need to do this deal,” and the whining can go on. At the same time, when I talk to people within the organization, I hear, “Our sales people aren’t keeping us informed of what’s going on, we need to know what’s happening to manage our resources properly,” “The sale person just dumps all this […]
What Happened To The Conversation?
This morning, I was out for my morning run around the lake. Up ahead, I saw a guy approaching, wearing headphones, smiling, head bouncing with the music. Looked like he was having a great run. Everyone he passed, he shouted, “Hi!” As he approached me, he shouted, “Hi!” I responded, “Great day isn’t it?” He didn’t respond, and continued on. I was struck by his lack of response and thought about it during the rest of my run. I realized, that he wasn’t interested in engaging me in a conversation, after all, he was wearing headphones, preferring to listen to […]
For Sales Success – Everything Passes Through Finance!
In Tom Peters’ The Little BIG Things, on Item #46, he makes the point that “Everything Passes Through Finance.” It’s such a important, yet too often ignored critical success factor for sales people. In virtually every situation, Finance is always somehow involved in the sale. Sometimes, it’s just paying the invoice; other times it’s issuing the PO; and very often, it’s approving the budget and providing the funding. We all know this, but I am continually astounded by the sales people that neither know the key people in their customers’ Finance organizations, nor do they “speak the language.” It seems if finance […]