Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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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
The Power Of “Doing Things With…..”
Words are important, with the change of a single word, we often change our mindset, thinking about things differently, acting/behaving very differently. As sales people, we tend to talk about working with our customers. We use language like: “Doing something for them….,” Alternatively, “Doing things to them…..” As managers, we speak about our people in similar ways, we do something for or to them. Even though our intent may be to be helpful or to create value this wording focuses us on our own behaviors and actions, often forgetting the customer or sales person we are trying to engage. Stated […]
Insight Is Always Contextual!
HBR recently published an article, “Why ‘Tell Them Something They Don’t Know’ Is Bad Advice In B2B Sales.” The title is very “clickbaity,” upon reading it, the theme was very different, though perhaps not well explained. I don’t think anyone would argue, insight is important. It’s key to capturing the attention and imaginations of our prospects and customers. If I look at much of the prospecting email or calls I receive, clearly the marketing and sales enablement people have read the same books–they are trying to engage me with insight. But……. (You have to know there is a but) Too […]
Your Name Came Up…..
Yes, I’m whining about inept, manipulative prospecting. This might also be titled, “How stupid do you think your prospects are?” Several weeks ago, I get a LinkedIn Invitation: Dear David, Allow me to ask to be connected with you as I remember that your name and Partners In EXCELLENCE were mentioned during a conversation at the [Organization Name] conference, last December in Berlin. This connection is a first step to explore mutual interests. Best, [Name withheld to protect the clueless] Nice play to my ego and narcissism. I respond: Dear [Clueless], thanks for the note. I’m curious, what was the […]
Improving Sales Performance Without Changing “How You Sell”
Too often, as executives look to improve sales performance, they look to doing something new or different. It may be adopting a new methodology, new technologies or tools, changing your go to customer strategies. Any of these can improve sales performance, but the come with their costs. Since these represent major changes, the change management process and time involved in solidifying changes can be very long. Again, with any change, or doing something “new” or “different,” there are huge risks, and then there are the costs. Ironically, when we assess the performance of organizations, we find they aren’t as effective […]
“The Right Commission Plan Will Fix Everything….”
It’s that time of year. Many senior sales execs are starting their planning for next fiscal year. Inevitably, the commission plan becomes part of the discussion. “Dave, if only we get the right commission plan, we will fix all our performance problems! Can you help?” Of course I can help, but I always ask, “What makes you think it’s the compensation plan that’s standing in the way of sales performance?” The answers are pretty predictable, vague ideas about sales people being money driven, so all we have to do is show them the path to making more money, then they […]
Discovery, What’s Your Customer Learning?
We get discovery wrong in so many ways: We fail to do discovery. We jump straight to the pitch. We ask all the questions we are supposed to ask, without knowing what they mean and why we are asking them. Or we don’t pay attention to the answers. (This is a variant of 1, but we want to make the customer think we care when all we want to do is pitch.) We make it all about ourselves (so what’s different). We use discovery to learn what it takes to win the business. You know the routine: What are your […]