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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
Qualifying, A Primer
I’ve been writing a series of posts about selling basics. Too often, we take for granted that people understand these. We toss the words around, assuming people understand what we are talking about, what it means, and how it works. In reality, people don’t understand. The link to the series is here. I’ll be adding more over the coming weeks. Today, I’m focusing on qualifying. Yeah, I know many of you will say, “Well dugghhh, Dave, we know all about it and how important it is, after all, we’ve been selling for years…..” The reality, as I review pipelines, win/losses, […]
Do We Want To Eliminate Objections
I’ve seen a series of posts offering tricks and techniques to eliminating objections. Every day, we see experts commenting on objections, “how to overcome them, how to handle them, how to eliminate them.” Objections are often positioned as a battle between sellers and the customer, with our objective to prevail, defeating the customers’ objections On reflection, I thought, “Do we want to eliminate objections? Are we losing the opportunity to leverage objections in more meaningful and impactful ways?” Most of the pundits talk about objections like, “I don’t have the time, I’m not the right person, we don’t have a […]
Why Does Our Sales Engagement Look More Like Eating At A Cafeteria, Than Fine Dining
I read a fascinating study from GTM Partners. One of the observations was, “There is an average of 8 handoffs in the average customer acquisition and delivery process.” As I read that, the image of eating in a cafeteria struck me. Think of the last cafeteria you ate in. A mind numbing experience. You grab a tray, start walking down the line. You may have a choice of a couple of salads, the server behind the counter hands you what you ask for, then you hit side dishes. Someone spoons out the vegetables you ask for, then turns their attention […]
A Forecasting Tutorial
It was surprising to see the reactions to my post, Pipeline, Tutorial. Mistakenly, I had assumed people understood the basics around pipeline management, how to use the pipeline as a tool for maximizing personal performance, and other things. They don’t, I got a lot of great feedback about the post. But it caused other requests, people started asking for posts on other “basics.” It’s interesting, we toss these concepts around quite a bit, assuming we have a common understanding of them, the reality is we don’t. As a result, we waste a lot of time, misapplying the concepts. In the […]
We Shouldn’t Be Surprised By “Quiet Quitting”
“Quiet quitting” isn’t so quiet anymore. It, also, isn’t that new. We’ve seen and, too often, ignored the signs of this phenomena for years. All we have to do is look at data on employee engagement, tenure/attrition, employee satisfaction. Organizational leadership has been laying the groundwork for quiet quitting, ignoring the signals around this phenomena for years. For years, in selling, we’ve done everything we can to mechanize the process. People are treated as interchangeable widgets, if they don’t meet our goals, if they don’t make the number of dials, hit their activity numbers, strictly comply with what we are […]
The Secret Formula For Prospecting…..
The other day, I wrote one of my LinkedIn whining posts. I was, once again, whining about how poorly people prospect. As usual, it generated a lot of conversation about how widespread truly ineffective prospecting is. But my friend, Mike Webster, provided a very provocative question: “Well, David, I will bite. How, in general terms, should the companies who might have something to sell you and your team go about researching your current needs? Thanks.” In responding to Mike’s question, I made the point, “I have no problem providing people the formula that will guarantee a response from me. I […]