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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
Have You Heard The One About The Sales Person Who Recommended A Prospect Buy A Competitor’s Product?
There’s a great article in today’s New York Times, Start-Up Course In Survival. It’s a great article, but some of the lessons for sales professional are fantastic.The article reviews Jive Software’s overhaul of it’s business and sales efforts to face the new realities brought on by the economy. John McCracken, Jive’s new SVP of Sales reinvented their sales processes to improve focus and results.Previously, the sales people would try to sell to anyone. McCracken put a disciplined process in place, having sales people viciously disqualify customers who didn’t fit their sweet spot. “McCracken considered it a waste of time to […]
Designing High Performance Organizations, Designing High Performance Selling Processes
I’m a tremendous fan of Whitney Hess. Whitney calls herself a User Experience Designer. When I look at her stuff, I see principles that apply to successful organizational design and to developing high performance selling processes. Some translation is needed—but really obvious. Whitney gives us important lessons not just for User Experience Design but for creating high performing, aligned organizations. This is a great presentation on the 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design. If you are a sales or marketing professional, just do a global replace for User Experience Design With Customer Experience. Pay attention to Slide 22, […]
Sometimes All We Want Is Good Customers. Sometimes All Customers Want Is Good Vendors.
With this post, any doubt you may have had about me will be eliminated. You will know that I am schizoid, have multiple personalities, or some other disorder. In the last couple of months, I have written a number of times about establishing rich collaborative relationships and partnering with your customers. In this article, you may perceive me as reversing my position. I’m reacting to a lot of things I hear sales and marketing people talk about these days. “Partnering” is the “it” word for sales and marketing these days. I’ve just been watching a marketing campaign and commercials by […]
Where You Are Depends On Your Point Of View, A Fragile Sales Ecosystem
I’ve gotten a number of very positive comments on my post last week: If Your Suppliers Are In Trouble, Then You Are In Bigger Trouble! I wanted to expand on it, and to see if I could expand the dialog in the community—-meaning, Please Send Comments—regardless of where you see this, at my blog site, the Customer Collective, Sales Management 2.0, Top Sales Experts, SalesMarks, or wherever. If you are a blogger, feel free to publish this as a “guest post.” The comments confirm my thoughts in the original post. This is an important issue for all businesses, and sales […]
Delivering Happiness! Zappo’s
Zappo’s is one of the hottest and most innovative companies around. This is an inspirational presentations by Tony Hsieh, their CEO. There are important lessons in this for any business professional. Zappos – Startup2Startup – 03-26-09 View more presentations from zappos.
If Your Suppliers Are In Trouble, Then You Are In Bigger Trouble!
I usually direct this blog to sales and business professionals, focusing many of the discussions on the “sell” side issues. For this post, however, I want to focus on the “buy side.” A few weeks ago in Moving Beyond Selling To Building Collaborative Relationships, I cited a PWC CEO Survey in which 71% of CEO’s believed collaborative business relationships were critical with customers, yet only 40% felt these relationships were important for their suppliers? Talk to any sales person and you will find they are being hammered in their negotiations. Talk to any business professional and they will complain about […]