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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
Prisoners Of Our Own Experience
Recently, I had separate discussions with two very good sales executives. Each was taking a very strong position on particular aspects of selling. As the discussions progressed, I could see their perspectives were limited by their experience. One was talking about how to drive decision-making on deals. He was taking a position, “This is the way everything gets done. If you aren’t doing this, you will fail!” I pushed him on his statements, “What causes you to reach these conclusions?” He responded, “Every company I’ve worked for, every deal I have worked on fits this pattern. It’s what I’ve learned […]
On C-Level Buying
As sales people, we learn that we are to call high. We should be reaching the top executives in the corporation. We believe if only we could reach these individuals, we can wear them down or convince them to buy what we are selling. Often, we are so focused on reaching that exalted level, we neglect important people at lower levels. We, sometimes, believe that regardless of the decision a buying group might make, we can influence the C-Level to reverse unfavorable decisions. But too often, we get C-Level Buying wrong. Don’t get me wrong, C-Level executives can be very […]
What Does It Mean To Be “Authentic”
I was recently have a discussion with someone. It spanned some comments on LinkedIn and private discussions by email. I had reacted to something he had posted, suggesting that while his premise was very good in many circumstances, that there might be a number where very different approaches might be applied. We wandered in the conversation, he kept presenting data to support his argument, me responding, “Yes, and there is more….” At one point, perhaps out of frustration, he said: “It’s really important to note I share my experience vs. it’s always this way in every case – I give […]
Does Being On Commission Make You Untrustworthy?
I read a discussion between some wickedly smart people. One person took a position that one could not be a “Trusted Advisor,” and be on commission. He later extended the argument to include being accountable for achieving a quota compromised the ability of the sales person to be trusted. To be fair, there are people and organizations that are driven purely by self interest. They structure everything they do around maximizing the return they get, regardless the impact to the people they deal with, including customers. We have movies like Glengary, Glen Ross, Boiler-room, The Wolf Of Wall Street that […]
Trusting Yourself, Trusting Your People
Charlie Green and I were having a conversation about “Trust.” (Charlie is the world’s go to person on anything having to do with trust, particularly in sales.) We were discussing a concept I had, I’m still trying to work it out in my mind, Charlie helped in clarifying it. Let me try it on you, I’d love your feedback and ideas. I am thinking about the concept of trust as it applies to sales management. I was trying to understand the difference between managers that display trusting behaviors–genuinely, not naively. I’ve noticed the managers that tend to do this are […]
Understanding Customer Pain Points
This morning, I had a conversation with an entrepreneur. He was building the sales capability, scaling the growth of the company. He discussed a problem I hear from too many sales people: “We have great first meetings. We understand the customer pain points, we talk about how our solution can help them…. But after the first meeting, they go dark. When we finally get them to respond, they’ve shifted their focus to the latest crisis….. How do we keep them focused on the issues we discussed?” It’s a common problem. Sales people have great first meetings, but they lose momentum. […]