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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
Pipeline Quality
Somewhat surprisingly, my post on Win Rates generated a lot of discussion. As one might expect, much pf that was tied closely to the concept of pipeline quality. Stated differently, any sales person can always hit whatever pipeline goals that are established, for example, my favorite really clueless goal is that you have to have 3X pipeline for it to be healthy (I hope I don’t have to explain why that is clueless.) Give a sales person a pipeline goal and they can always hit it. The problem, is they usually fill it with garbage—which has an adverse impact on […]
Ask–Don’t Guess–Don’t Assume…..
I’m a, sometimes, fan of Scott Osman’s posts. He just published a fascinating article, “Ask Don’t Wonder” He makes the observation: “In too many situations, uncertainty was causes by trying to figure out what was going on rather than just asking the people who knew.” Our inability to do this, creates unnatural tension in ourselves and in those we work with. In our roles as leaders or as sellers, I think we, often, do a variant of this. Instead of asking, we make a guess or we make an assumption. The majority of the time, we are wrong! We’ve guessed […]
Win Rates
As much as we obsess on winning, hitting our goals, earning commissions; we are actually pretty bad at it. Over the years, the data demonstrates how badly we actually do. Fewer sellers achieving quota, more customers choosing not to buy, more customers choosing not to engage sellers. Everything is going in the wrong direction. While companies are achieving their revenue goals, they do so by obsessing on doing more. More sellers, more volume/velocity, extended outreach. But sometimes, when we get below those numbers, we see they are actually underperforming their potential. While they are achieving their revenue goals, they should […]
What Is “Salesmanship?”
I read a fascinating article by Kelly Fairchild. She talked about “salesmanship.” It got me to thinking about, “What is salesmanship?” Based on the conversations I have with sellers and my social feeds, people seem to think salesmanship has to do with the following: Hitting quota, making commission. Beating the competition. Pitching products/solutions. Prospecting, getting meetings. Executing messaging sequences and outreaches across all channels to get meetings. Persuading people to buy our products. Overcoming objections and resistance. Negotiating to close. Beating the competition. Leveraging language and techniques that trigger people to buy your solution. Maximizing our time to sell. Filling […]
Hacking Business Acumen With ChatGPT
Regular readers will know among a number of things, I’m obsessed with ChatGPT and I’m obsessed with business acumen. I decided to test how Chat could help us better understand and connect with our customers. I’ve mixed feelings about it, but realized my expectations may be unrealistic. For sellers having no or very basic understanding of how businesses work, key business drivers for a role or industry, ChatGPT can be a very quick hack to learning about key issues and challenges. There are a few few caveats: Most of the responses provided don’t provide deep insights or “aha” moments. They […]
The Subjectiveness Of Value
I’m a fan of Larry Levine, he provokes thoughtful discussions. Recently he led a discussion around value creation comparing two organizations with very different value propositions, Walmart and Nordstroms. The conversation was interesting, a little confusing. Some were taking positions the “high touch” of the Nordstrom experience is superior to that of the low touch, low cost (?) experience of Walmart. Clearly, both companies have very different strategies around their customer experience and value proposition. And their respective customers don’t expect a convergence of those strategies. I happen to shop at both, and I enjoy and value the experience I […]