Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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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
Let’s Celebrate: 200th Post!! Also, It’s Moving Day!
Taking a page from some of my blogging colleagues, I wanted to celebrate and thank all my readers. This is my 200th blog post.Before I go on, part of the celebration is to announce that we’re moving. The new location and link for our blog is:Making A Difference.For those of you that want to see it “spelled out,” the new location is: https://partnersinexcellenceblog.comPlease update your feeds, readers, or links. I want to make sure you can continue to follow us. After this post, all my future updates will be at the new site. The new site, also has the complete […]
Interesting Strategy: "We inspire sales people…." Didn’t Inspire Me!
Yesterday, I got an intriguing tweet. It was from an individual and simply stated, “We inspire sales people. If interested let’s connect.” I have to admit, the pitch caught my interest. I looked at his twitter profile and saw roughly 95% of his 374 updates had one of 3 variants of the same pitch. It got me to thinking, aren’t many of our initial introductions and value propositions to prospects very similar? Too often, don’t we hear: “Hi, I’m Debbie Smith from XYZ Company. We make the best widgets in the world, if you are interested let’s connect.” These introductions […]
Salespeople, Please Stop Your Pitch Long Enough For My Questions, You Might Close A Deal!
You know this story, I’m sitting at my desk, the phone rings, I answer, and an enthusiastic voice: “Good morning Dave!, I’m Roger from XXX…..” The pitch begins. This guy was selling a Sales 2.0 tool, which I actually had some interest in. I barely had the words, “tell me what you do” out of my mouth when the script started. “Excuse me, may I ask a question,” I tried to inject, but the pitch went on. “Would you please let me ask you a question,” he paused, I continue “you know if you give people a chance to ask […]
Sales — The Thinking Person’s Profession!
I love being in sales, I love talking to great sales professional. I think a large part of it is that success in sales requires you to really think. Many people make a mistake when they think about sales. Some think it is all about the product–success comes from good product knowledge and a great pitch. Good product knowledge is important, but that’s not what sales is about. And the pitch really has nothing to do with it, unless you are in the infomercial business. Many think it is about the relationship. The image of the glad handing, back slapping […]
Sales Performance Management — Two Key Levers
It’s approaching that time of year. I’m getting calls from clients: “Dave, we will be starting our planning process in September. We will have to commit to 2010’s numbers and budget, we will have to develop a commission plan that motivates our sales people to hit the goals….. We’re going to need your help.” These conversations got me to thinking about a mistake I think many organizations make in thinking about sales performance management. Too often, people make the mistake of thinking the cornerstone to sales performance management is the commission/incentive plan. “If we get the sale incentive plan right, […]
The Future Of Selling — Consultative, Solutions and Customer Focused? Deja Vu All Over Again?
I’m frustrated and a little impatient. As a profession, we seem to be doing the same thing over and over, making little progress. Sometimes, I feel like I’m Bill Murray waking up every morning in “Ground Hog Day.” All sorts of sales consultants, guru’s, and other self proclaimed experts (probably including me, if I’m honest) make a lot about being consultative, solutions and customer focused, value driven and even provocative in selling. These topics have been fodder for 100’s of books, 1000’s of articles and $ billions in sales training and other services. Virtually every self respecting sales professional talks […]