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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
Social Media/Sales 2.0 — Are The Right People Listening?
I’ve been involved in a few debates over the past few months that seem to be “Old School Sales” versus “New School Sales.” They are odd debates.The debates are carried out in the “blogosphere,” which, I think, is one of the newer school vehicles. They seem to be carried out by individuals that are actively engaged in using or experimenting with the new tools. Everyone trying to learn about how to leverage these tools to displace old tools or complement them (I won’t get into that debate right now).The odd thing is these discussions/arguments are among people who have already […]
What Commoditized Products Can Teach Us About Selling
I have a confession, I grew up selling high tech systems, software and complex solutions. I spent much of my career in selling very complex capital equipment. For years, I had an arrogance that real sales people sold these solutions, everything else was order taking. A number of years ago, several companies having commoditized products managed to overlook my arrogance and asked me to help improve their sales processes. I think may have gotten more from them than they may have gotten from me. For so many years, we systems guys relied on great products. We would go to great […]
SBWA — Selling By Wandering Around
In their 1982 book, In Search Of Excellence, Peters and Waterman coined the acronym: MBWA – Management By Wandering Around. The thought was for managers to literally get close to customers and their people by “wandering around.” I thought it time to resurface a variant of that theme: SBWA, Selling By Wandering Around. I’m constantly amazed by how little sales professionals to this. Too many sales people call on the same people, asking the same question, “Can I sell you anything today?” The more solutions oriented sales people will question needs and priorities, but make the same mistake of calling […]
Secrets To Success In 8 Words And 3 Minutes
With that title, you know I couldn’t have come up with this. Why use 8 words when you can use a 1000;-) Great TED presentation by Richard St. John on the secrets of success.
Social Selling: Live Q&A Webcast
Leveraging social selling and media is critical to all sales and marketing professionals. We’re all struggling with learning the concepts and how we should be adopting our strategies to incorporate social selling and social media. The folks at The Customer Collective are holding a terrific event. I encourage anyone who follows this blog to register and learn. The announcement is below, as well as a link to register. Take the time to learn and upgrade your skills! Social Selling: Live Q&A on Selling with Web 2.0 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST March 31, 2009 How do you take […]
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 […]