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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
A Paradox, The Sales Process And The Buying Journey
As sales professionals we face an intriguing paradox. We know, for complex B2B buying, the buyer’s journey can best be described as chaotic. What we have always believed is a linear process–identify a challenge, commit to change, define the problem/needs, evaluate alternatives, select a solution, turns out to be chaotic, as illustrated by the picture below At the same time, we have a relatively linear sales process: prospect, qualify, discover, propose, close. A sales process is critical for our success. It enables us to focus on the right opportunities. It provides a framework for the things we must do, with […]
Are Traditional Sales Managers Even Necessary?
Sometimes, I think Tim Ohai and I are brothers from different mothers. So much of what he writes is aligned with what I think. At least we are aligned, hopefully, we aren’t tragically wrong 😉 Tim has been writing a series on sales management, Why Can’t We Build Better Sales Managers? In this particular article, Tim suggests we may not need traditional sales managers anymore. My immediate reaction was, “What is the role of a sales manager?” I suspect if I asked 10 people, I’d get at least 15 different responses. And I think this is the core of the […]
Strategic Procurement And Sales, On Parallel Paths
Probably, ever since the first sale was made to a customer that involved a buying agent, procurement and sales professionals have viewed each other as adversaries. Every time I talk to a sales person about procurement, eyes roll, a groan escapes their lips, and the nightmare begins, “All they are going to do is beat me up on price, they don’t understand, I’ve got to hit my numbers…. I don’t trust them…” When I spoke to procurement folks, the story wasn’t very different, “My job is to cut costs and produce savings….. Sales people don’t understand this… I don’t trust […]
Turbulence And Fear Of Buying
I spend too much of my life on planes. The other day was a rough flight, it was typical winter storms. I’ve become immune to the occasional shaking, even the captain suspending service for a few minutes. But this flight caused me to pause. We hit a pocket, it seemed like we dropped 100 plus feet. The bouncing was worse than I experienced. We hit a few more pockets, a few of the overhead bins popped open, I could hear carts crashing in the galley. I could see a few of the people around me praying. Despite the 100 + […]
Everything In Sales Is Dead, Long Live Sales And Selling!
It’s tedious, every day a scroll through my various news feeds, there are any number of articles declaring the death of something in sales, or sales itself. Cold calling is dead Social selling is dead ROI is dead SaaS selling is dead The telephone is dead Email is dead CRM is dead The selling process is dead [Name a methodology] is dead AI replaces the need for sales people Sales is dead……. There are endless proclamations, often by vendors or consultants who are selling whatever has displaced the thing that has died. Often, these proclamations are accompanied with faux data […]
The Coming Sales Talent Crisis, Part 3
If you haven’t sensed it yet, I think Sales Talent will probably be “THE” issue confronting sales executives in the coming 3-5 years. In some sense, we’ve tried everything else–technology, sales enablement, incentives, wishful thinking–yet sales results continue to plummet. The old maxim, “selling is about people,” has never been more true, but in a context that is much broader than that mentioned by that of this old maxim. We can’t engage our customers, helping them solve their problems or achieve their goals unless we have people with the mindsets, behaviors, attitudes, skills and competencies to help our customers in […]