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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
You’re Not Ready For That Call!
Somehow, it seems that a post on preparing for sales calls/meetings would be totally unnecessary. One would hope all sales professionals would have a plan for every call, if only to manage their own time very well. When I talk to sales people about the importance of sales call/meeting planning, the responses tend to fall into two categories. The first category is “the voice of experience.” These sales people look at me, roll their eyes, saying, “You don’t understand, I’ve been selling for year, I’ve made 1000s of calls.. I know how to get it done!” The second category responds, […]
“Whose Success Was This????”
A client asked me to interview a candidate for a key sales role. The sales person had several jobs over the past 5 years, none lasting longer than 18 months. He had been in his current job for 9 months. In each role, he outlined his stellar accomplishments, his great wins, his quota over-attainment. I was suitably wowed! I dug in a little, what’s the onboarding time for each of these roles? What’s the average sales cycle for each role? The sales person wanted to impress me with his knowledge and ability to sell very complex deals. “Oh the onboarding […]
I Hate Prospecting!
I know how unfashionable it is to say this, but I hate prospecting. We’re supposed to love it. According to many pundits/sales experts, it is the secret to sales success. We are supposed to love and revel in prospecting. I get it, if our pipelines are empty, we have to find new opportunities and we do this through prospecting. But my news feeds are dominated with things like “the Joy of Prospecting…” There are battles about which prospecting techniques are alive or dead, which is best. Is it social media where all the cool prospectors hang out, is it hitting […]
“It’s All About Execution,” Easily Said
I’ve been obsessed with failure recently. More specifically, I’ve been pestering close friends and mentors with the question: “If we know what we should be doing, if we know how to do it, if we know how important it is to our results, why do we consistently fail to do those things?” Unless you are brand new to sales, your name is Rip van Winkle, or you are absolutely clueless, all of us know what we should be doing. We know we have to: Prospect Qualify Engage in a disciplined selling process, aligned with our customers’ buying process. Keep a […]
What Is The Most Important Part Of The Sales Process?
Recently, someone posed a question on LinkedIn: “What is the most important part of the sales process?—–Prospecting, Discovery, Closing?” We see versions of this question all the time, with everyone staking out various positions (often supporting what they sell). Some of the discussions drill down into an issue, for example the endless battle of social and other selling (would one call this anti-social?). Others look at skills like questions, objection handling, and so forth. Whatever the version of the question there is the continuous exploration of “What is most important?” These questions always present us a false choice. The reality […]
Hacking Sales
“Hacking” is a hot word. We read constantly of hacking–both in good and bad contexts: We’re terrified of people/organizations hacking our passwords, ids, accounts, systems, and so forth. In this case, hacking is breaking in and stealing something. We’re fascinated with computer hackers. Both terrified of those hacking for bad purposes, and envious of those that figure out how to get things done in clever ways. People like Tim Ferris, make millions in helping identify “hacks” or shortcuts to all sorts of things–whether it is learning a language, traveling, learning a new skill, making money, getting fit. We’re enthralled to […]