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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 Sales Conversation
In some recent projects, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze sales conversations. I’ve been tracking conversations sales people are having, from the very first conversation to the closing conversations. We know each conversation is different, they vary from company to company, customer to customer. But listening to enough of them, one starts to notice patterns. Here’s a brief synopsis of how conversations seem to progress through the selling cycle: “Hello, let me tell you about our product, would you be interested in learning more?” “Let me send you links to some case studies and brochures.” “This is more of what […]
If We Fixed Sales Execution, Would We Fix Sales?
Let’s try a thought experiment. You will see some of the assumptions are very simplistic, they will become obvious as we move through the thought experiment. They don’t impact the thought experiment. For the moment, suspend your judgement and bear with me. The reason I want you to walk through this is to help you think about what I think is the biggest challenge facing sales leaders in maximizing the performance of their organizations: Talent. By Talent, I mean finding/attracting the right people to our organizations, onboarding them effectively, developing them to both perform and the highest levels possible and […]
Knowing “How To Win,” Makes You A Better Prospector!
Social media channels are dominated by top of the pipeline/funnel thinking. The answer to making your numbers is always more demand gen, lead gen and prospecting. There are battles between pundits on which approach is better. For example the traditional prospecting camp and the social selling camp. In reality, we need to do it all. The message in at least 80% of the articles/books one reads focuses on lead gen, demand gen, and prospecting. Talk to any manager, most will say, “We need more in our pipelines.” But in, How Do You Win, I suggested our thinking was backwards. Rather […]
“You’re A Pain In The Ass! Thank You”
We should all be fortunate enough to have a few people that are “pain’s in the asses” to us. Last week, I posted something on LinkedIn. My friend, Mike Webster, disagreed with me, and it was over one word. I had used the word “but” in part of my “pontificating.” Mike challenged me on that, I provided a sloppy response. As he usually does, Mike didn’t let me off the hook. He challenged me again, then added, “Or am I being obtuse in my comments by focusing on your use of ‘but’?” I realized that I had been really sloppy […]
The Sales Person As “Contextualizer”
Context is everything! Each of our customers is different, each company has different goals, strategies, priorities, challenges, cultures, values. Though they may compete head to head, or participate in the same industry, or the same markets, every company is very different. People are different. We categorize them by their titles, CEO, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing, or by their persona, or by their behavioral style, or by their role in the buying process (remember economic buyers, technical buyers, influencers, decisionmakers.) But each person’s hopes, fears, dreams, and challenges is unique to them, the situation they face at a point […]
How Do You Win?
My good friend, Andy Paul, and I were talking about the state of selling today. We were commiserating about the absence of discussion about “How Do We Win?” So much of the discussion about sales these days focuses on the top of the pipeline, that is, how do we find more opportunities. The reason people are worried about finding more opportunities is that we are struggling to make our numbers. The fashionable answer to making our numbers is doing more–finding more opportunities. Alternatively, if we are making our numbers, and we are driven to grow, the fashionable answer is, find […]