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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
So Now It’s Provocative Selling!
I hate to start blogs with a disclaimer or apology, but I was very excited with I saw Geoffrey Moore’s (et. al.) article in HBR on Provoke Your Customer. I deeply respect—in fact hang on most of his words, his writing and work. I’ve crossed every chasm, done the bowling alleys and survived almost every tornado. I was eager to be a student of his new writing about Provocative Selling!It is a provocative article-perhaps that was its intended purpose. Every sales professional should read it, study it and absorb it’s many good ideas. The most challenging notion in the article […]
Announcing The Ultimate Sales Process Naming Contest!!
If you tend to take yourself too seriously, if you are a consultant who can’t laugh at yourself, please — I beg you — don’t read this column. It has no redeeming value, no real insight, it’s just intended to be fun and to poke some fun. I started thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I first read the HBR article about Provocative Selling. I read it, thinking I would learn something new. There were some interesting ideas, but fundamentally it reiterated what professional selling is really about (I will write later, more seriously about it). But it […]
The Big Idea: Solve Your Customers’ Big Problems
Customers are looking for something different these days. Our traditional approaches to selling are no longer appropriate. As a friend and colleague, Niall Devitt, states, “Buyers are looking for something new!” Other people are saying the new paradigm is “Provocative Selling.” I’m not certain I buy into more consultant speak about a more advanced form of selling, but I think the underlying idea is interesting. I think the great challenge to sales professionals in helping their customers is to help them solve bigger problems—or even their BIG problems. This requires shaking up how we think and sell, as well as […]
WIIFT — The New Sales Mantra
Every sales person (and business professional) knows the acronym WIIFM — What’s In It For Me. Sometimes, unfortunately, I think we have become great practitioners of that mantra — and that’s what does us in, both in how we connect and bring value to our customers, and in the result we actually produce. While every sales person is driven by accomplishing their goals, making the number, we can only achieve success by focusing on our customer. Only when we truly ask the question “What’s In It For Them” can we know what the customer values and how we can fulfill […]
Top Sales Experts Interview
It was a great privilege to be interviewed by Maureen Blandford the other day for Top Sales Experts TSE Dailies. Maureen and I spent some time discussing the challenges sales professionals have in this economy and changes that are needed to drive success, both now and in the recovery. Take a few minutes to listen, I’d appreciate your feedback and comments!
Akamai Has It Right! Engage Customers In A Different Conversation
I’ve been fascinated by Paul Sagan’s interview in Network World. I’ve written many times about how sales people need to go to customers and ask “How can we help?” We need to engage customers in a different conversation. Akamai is engaging it’s customers in these new conversations. Sagan “want his sales team to spend more time with customers.” They are continuing to be aggressive in finding new business, but the have also “upped the expectation for how often we’re going to touch the customer and talk to them…..understand what’s going on in their business, what’s their pain point and can […]