Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Can You Make A Sales Call Without Talking About Your Product?
Imagine you have an appointment with your ideal customer. The only constraint is that you can’t talk about your product. Could you make the call? What would it look like? I suppose you could talk about the weather, exchange chit chat about the World Cup, perhaps the latest baseball games or cricket matches. But that wouldn’t be very satisfying to you or the customer. It probably would be a very short meeting, because your ideal customer probably doesn’t like to have her time wasted. What could you possible talk about that would be a good use of the customer’s time? […]
The Decline Of Corporate Culture
Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for lunch….” We all know how important culture is in aligning everyone in the organization and driving high performance. Company cultures are built on a common set of values and beliefs. They tend to focus on: Who we are, as an organization. Why we exist. What we believe. What our values are. What we want to stand for–to our employees, customers, suppliers, shareholders, and communities. What our common purpose is and how we remain purposeful. Corporate culture tend not to describe what we make or sell. In start-ups or small organizations, the culture […]
The Power Of The Discovery Process
There are two fundamentals to maximizing your ability to win a deal–unfortunately, both tend to be executed very poorly. The first is Qualification, or as I like to call it, Disqualification. This focuses us on pursuing the right deals with customers that are committed to changing. The second is the Discovery Process. Too often, sales people skip right over this, going straight to pitching their products/solutions. We see day in sales people’s clumsy outreach to us. Whether in an email or a bad prospecting call, most skip over qualifying and understanding what our needs/interests might be–immediately pitching their products. The […]
The Problem With “USPs,” They Aren’t Unique
The Unique Selling Proposition is a cornerstone to much of what we do in marketing and sales. At a high level, it’s supposed to be a compelling statement about who we are, what makes our solution different. Ideally, it is so compelling the customer immediately sees the light and issues a PO. All we have to do is position our USP in our web sites, our marketing materials, and our prospecting pitches, and we immediately capture the customers’ attentions. I’m not sure USPs ever really worked, but in today’s world there is really nothing right about the concept of the […]
Who’s Responsible For Sales Enablement?
Long time readers might accuse me of asking a trick question. The obvious answer is, “Duuugggh Dave, it’s Sales Enablement……” But if you think about it, sales enablement is about helping our sales people achieve the highest levels of performance/productivity in executing our business strategies in the face of the customer. A lot of people and functions play important roles in doing this, so “sales enablement,” extends far beyond the Sales Enablement function. Before, I go further, a disclaimer–the Sales Enablement function is an important function in the sales organization, but it is unrealistic to expect that Sales Enablement does […]
Do You Have The Right Sales Business Model?
No sales business model is “forever.” As our markets change, as our customers change, as our own business strategies change, there is a necessity to reassess our sales business models and go to market strategies. Unfortunately, too many companies ignore these transitions. They stay stuck with one model, working harder and harder, failing to produce the results, but failing to recognize the characteristics of their markets have changed–requiring a need to change the sales business model. Or they may have chosen the wrong business model in the first place. We’re all familiar with the classic “S curves” of growth. Some […]