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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
Time Available For Selling
We, our customers, colleagues, managers are time poor! In reality, we will always be that way, we will have more demands on our time than we have time to commit. For years, I’ve been lobbying for a 30 hour day or a 9 day workweek, somehow thinking things would be better if we just had more time. But, as much as I argue for these changes, they seem unlikely to be accepted. History is filled with innovations intended to help us leverage our time much more impactfully. We used to be limited in the time we could spend with customers […]
Why I Love Selling
Having anything to do with sales was the furthest thing from my mind when I was thinking about a job following college. I’d had a few selling experiences as a kid. In Boy Scouts, there was always an event of some sort that we had to sell tickets for. My Mom usually bought the allocation I was assigned to sell. Sometimes a neighbor would buy them (but I think my Mom had called saying she would pay for them). In high school, I worked afternoons and weekends at a local sports shop. While I had to help some customers, the […]
Activities, Outputs, Outcomes—What’s The Difference?
The “new” sales mantra seems to be all about activity. Our managers measure us on activities, and it seems our performance is based on how many activities we complete. As a result, we measure all sorts of things to demonstrate our “busyness,” dials, emails, meetings, InMails, contacts, proposals, and on and on. The more activities we do, the better. Sales people and managers are overwhelmed with the data around activities we are held accountable to perform. Our social feeds are filled with “hacks,” enabling us to do even more activities. “Use ChatGPT to produce 1000 emails in 15 minutes……” Activities […]
But Isn’t That What Consultants Do……
I was talking to a colleague about the lost opportunity sellers have in helping customers focus on their business problems and challenges. Most of what we call selling forces the customer to do all the heavy lifting of recognizing there is an opportunity to change, identifying problems, understanding it, learning about it, engaging other in thinking about the issues and things they might do in addressing those problems by changing and leveraging solutions. Sellers tend to get engaged at the very end, when they have done all that and are looking to solutions or considering alternative products to help them […]
Business Focused Buying, Product Focused Selling—Never The Twain Shall Meet
Our customers are focused on addressing their business issues–whether addressing an opportunity, driving growth, improving operations, solving a problem. Sellers focus on their products–what the products do, the capabilities, features/functions, and how the products are superior to the alternatives. And this is where the challenge is. Buyers and sellers are focused on two entirely different things. With respect to Keenan, this is the gap. But the challenge buyers and sellers face is more than bridging that gap. It’s more than how we, collaboratively, get from one side to the other. The challenge is the buyers are doing something they have […]
A Differentiating Skill: Depth Of Thinking
What really differentiates sellers in helping customers in complex B2B buying processes? Is it the products they represent? Possibly a little, but in reality, when the customer develops a short list of alternatives, any of the solutions can meet their needs. Is it the price of the solution? When there is no other basis of differentiation, price will always win. But price is actually a small element when contrasted with risk, opportunity cost, and value realization. But too often, sellers don’t engage customers in these conversations, so they focus on price. Is it our “cleverness,” in how we engage the […]