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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
Intuitive Selling—More Than A Feeling
Have you ever experienced talking about an opportunity, a situation, or strategy with a very high performing sales person? Or been with someone dealing with a very complex deal, and all of a sudden they come up with the right answers, or strategies? Or that individual that just seems to always have the right answers for dealing with the tough situations? Seemingly, they pull the answers from thin air, but they are, almost always, right on target. Somehow they “get” everything in a flash and manage to perform at levels, many of us aspire to. When you ask them, they […]
Do They Have Budget???
“Do they have budget,” is a fundamental qualifying question for every seller. We have all sorts of tricks/techniques for determining this. There’s the old standby, “What were you planning to spend?” Alternatively, the direct approach, “How much have you budgeted for this project?” Or if we are selling XaaS, “As you know our standard pricing is $X per user, how many seats are you funded to support?” Sometimes, particularly in more complex situations, we ask “Is this project funded, ” or “How are you getting funding for the project?” We spend a lot of time trying to figure out if […]
Our Customers Aren’t On A Buying Journey…
Most of the time, as sellers, we focus on our self interests. As a result we spend a lot of time looking at our selling process and the things we want to do to our customers. We focus on the things that drive our success, perhaps not really understanding what the customer is trying to achieve and their success. Sometimes, though rarely, we think about their buying process. But usually we think about it in the context of things we think they should be doing to make it easier for us to sell to them. We design their activities as […]
Sales Process, It’s Not What We Do To Our Customers….
When I sit down with sales organizations, we inevitably spend a lot of time talking about the Sales Process. There are always so many issues that come up in these discussions, I’ll cover these in this series. But one of the most fundamental problems I see is these sales processes are internally focused, always looking at the things we Do To Our Customers. There are all sorts of activities, separated by stages, focusing on what we inflict on our customers. We: Qualify them. Discover their needs. Re-qualify them. Find out who’s involved in the decision process. Focus on identifying the […]
Driving Our Customers/Prospects Away!
I, and so many others, write constantly about how buying is changing and how sellers (sales and marketing) must change to respond to these changes. We read about how email is failing, phone calls, social, and virtually every other engagement platform. We have continuing debates about “Is cold calling dead?” “Is outbound dead?” We look for new channels or methods of engagement. Is it trade shows (so old school but effective)? Is in webcasts? Do we leverage thought leaders and influencers? Do we personalize or not? We are, collectively, jumping on the AI bandwagon as the miracle cure for all […]
Talking To Customers
As sellers, our job is to talk to customers. But apparently we do a very bad job at it. Research report after research report say the same things: The majority of customers prefer a rep-free buying experience. Over 83% (and climbing) prefer to learn about products/solutions without involving a seller. For those that do involve sellers, they minimize the time they invest. Currently, it’s around 17% for all sellers–not just us, but our competitors. Customers say sellers waste their time. Sellers don’t understand the customer and the business, they don’t talk about what the customer cares about. They only talk […]