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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
Provocative Selling — The “Shock And Awe” Of Selling?
I just read To Sell More, Scare Customer Spitless by Geoffrey James at BNET. The headline catches your attention–It’s a discussion of Geoffrey Moore’s Provocative Selling. In case you have missed the discussion, Provocative Selling is the latest gimmick to catch your customer’s attention, making them aware of problems and opportunities to improve their business. In the case made by Moore, you are making the customer aware of things they may not have been aware of in the past. You surface areas of under performance relative to the industry or competition, you surface opportunities for growth or improvement. While I […]
Rethinking Qualifying—Is This Good Business For Us?
Most of the time when we think about qualifying sales opportunities, we focus on the customer situation. We consider: Do they have a real need to buy, is there some compelling issue, opportunity or problem they have urgency in addressing? Do they have funding for a solution, or will they commit funding once it’s justified? Are they willing to seriously consider as a potential solution provider? There may be other criteria depending on how you qualify opportunities. There’s something important missing, it’s an asessment of whether this is good business for our company. It’s important to think about whether this […]
Does Your Customer Have A Need To Buy?
An old colleague of mine had a great way of looking at things. He and I would meet with thousands of sales people every year. He woul soften comment: “The one thing common with every sales person we meet is their overwhelming need to sell.” With little provocation, they would launch into their pitches. They would enthusiastically talk about the latest greatest features of their products, how great their companies were, and how superior their offerings were when compared to competition. Virtually everyone we met was very compelling. However strong their need to sell was, it made no difference until they […]
The Pipeline Review–An Underused and Underappreciated Coaching Opportunity
The pipeline review, I’ve participated in 100’s of these, somehow they all look the same. Everyone’s sitting around the table, the only people paying attention at any moment is the interrogator—I mean sales manager, and the interrogatee–the sales person on under the microscope at the moment. The others pretend they are paying attention, hiding behind the screens of their notebooks—both for protection and for their real purpose–doing email, at least until its their turn under the spotlight. The “conversation” between interrogator and interrogatee tends to go like this: Interrogator (sales manager): “What’ happened to this deal in the past week?” […]
Making A Difference — A Plea For Your Help
It’s that time of year again! In less than 60 days, I will be participating in my 4th MS 150, Bay to Bay ride. It’s a fantastic event, on October 10 and 11, about 2500 people will ride from Orange County to San Diego, raising money for MS. More than 400,000 people in the US and 2.5 people worldwide have MS. But the impact is far greater than that with millions of additional family members and friends impacted by this disease. As usual, I will be doing the 150+mile route. It’s a fantastic route along the coast and into the […]
Do You Trust Your People Enough To Let Them Succeed?
File this under “Practice What You Preach.” Over the past few months, I’ve been involved with a small organization trying to achieve something very important. It’s a very tough challenge with some degree of personal and professional risk to the team. I’ve been advising them—perhaps more than advising them because of the significance of what they are trying to achieve. The team has been struggling, we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what is going wrong and how to get back on target. I’ve been watching plans, schedules and commitments, jumping in to lend a hand—whether […]