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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
In Examining 27,357 Wins, 95% Of Sales People Did This One Thing!
Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of research, and collected our own data and analytics on what causes sales professionals to win. We’ve seen certain patterns emerge. Things like engaging the customer early in their process, ideally being the organization driving their thinking drives higher win rates. Other areas that one would expect is demonstrating superior value in both the solution and how we engage the customer in their buying process drive higher win rates. Giving customers new ideas, helping them improve their business drives both win rates and customer loyalty (derived from Gartner Research). But we’ve found one […]
“We Chose The Vendor With The Most Complete Solution”
I just read a report, “The Mood Of The B2B Buyer.” The results weren’t surprising, reinforcing most of the other research I see. There was one piece that provoked me to reflect. It was the response to the question, “In what circumstance might you opt for a more expensive solution to address a specific business need or pain point?” 53% of the respondents said, “If the vendor had a more complete solution.” It’s not at all surprising, but I can imagine thousands of marketers, sales enablement, and sales professionals salivating at that statement. I can just see how the majority […]
Are “Traditional” Selling Skills Even Relevant Anymore?
Categorize this post as “thinking out loud.” I’m not sure what I think about this issue, so I’m using the post to help me think through it and to get your input and ideas. We all know the story—buying has changed profoundly, complex buying is chaotic, we need to be customer focused/driven, we need to create value in every interaction….. At the same time, customers have many more sources/channels for information to help in their buying decisions, AI/ML technologies will make many transactional sales roles less necessary (tough this isn’t new news). And we have the convergence of information overwhelm, […]
Stopping Our Metrics Obsession!
Metrics are important. They provide a means of helping us understand whether we are on target to achieving our goals. They also give us insight into potential changes in the market. As we “instrument” more of the selling process, whether through CRM, mobile tools, and other means, we have the capability of measuring many more things than we have in the past. Recently, I was doing some reading on metrics. One group recommended tracking the following: Meetings/Opportunity, Time between touches, Opportunity conversion, Untouched opportunities, Contacts per account, Follow up meeting ratio, Opportunity progression, Email engagement rate, Total opportunities engaged, New […]
Faux Transformations
The word “transformation,” has become the buzzword for 2018. Every consultant, guru, prognosticator talks about transformation. Within organizations, executives proudly present their transformation strategies. Yeah, I also use the word–possibly too much. The problem is, when one looks at most of these “transformations,” nothing looks that different from before, certainly the outcomes don’t look any better-much of the research data would suggest sales/marketing performance is getting worse. Too often, a new technology tool is viewed as transformative, but instead, organizations often end up doing the same things they always have, just assisted by expensive new technology. In some cases, all […]
In Praise Of Pushy Sales People
I probably should come out of the closet. I’m a pushy sales person. Perhaps some will recommend a 12 step program or some other therapy to make me less pushy. But, to be honest, I like being pushy. My customers and clients, for the most part, appreciate it too–though at some times my pushiness makes them uncomfortable. (I’ll come to that later.) By now, some of you may be thoroughly confused. If you’ve read my blog for some time, this would seem out of character. Many would say, “No one likes a pushy sales person.” So it’s important to provide […]