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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
Pay Attention To What We Say, Not How We Execute…
My dad was a great teacher and role model. But every once in a while, I’d start whining at him, “Dad, you’re telling me I should do these things, but you don’t! Why do I have to do it, if you don’t?” Jokingly, he would always respond, “Do what I say, not what I do…” While he was always teasing me, this seems to be the modus operandi for far to many organizations. They declare certain things, whether at their websites, in press releases, in the speeches/webcasts executives do, in the way their sales people engage and work with customers. […]
Helping Customers Buy!
We work to find a customer with a need to change. They have a problem that we solve, they express a strong need to change. We qualify them. They assemble a buying team, over the years, for complex sales the size of this team has grown. We work with them, identifying their needs and requirements, helping them think about the issues, presenting our solutions/capabilities, demonstrating that we are the best choice. We work on moving them as aggressively as possible to making a decision and choosing us. In the background, our managers are pressuring us. They are conducting deal reviews. […]
Sales Is Hard…….
I’ve been following a fascinating discussion led by David Masover on LinkedIn. David provokes the discussion with a question, What Makes Sales So Hard? There’s a lot of discussion, with many very powerful and fair points. People talk about the pressure to perform, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of conflict, getting people to listen, pressure to achieve goals, and so forth. Without a doubt, sales is hard! But is it any different with any other job in an organization? Think of any other role in an organization. Whether it’s in engineering, manufacturing, finance, HR, operations, and, well…..procurement. In […]
Imagining A Year In The Life Of A New Salesperson…..
We’ve a robust hiring market for sales people. Huge salaries, bonuses, other incentives are being offered; all to fill vacant positions. Turnover (voluntary and involuntary) is currently at about 11 months. I thought it might be interesting to do a thought experiment, imagining a year in the life of a modern sales person. Day 1, month 1: The sales person is starting a new job. Probably this person has some experience, maybe even working for a competitor. But they have to go through an onboarding program. They embark on several months, sometimes longer, of learning products/solutions, understanding the company, their […]
Selling Process Or Buying Process?
This is a trick question—but there is a lot of confusion about whether sellers should be focused on the selling or buying process. Of course the answer is both. Some might fairly argue, “We are better aligned with the customer when we focus on the customer buying process.” Of course! And too often we fail to do this, focusing on what we want to accomplish–executing our selling process. We implement sequences of qualifying, discovering, demoing, proposing, closing. Each step is scripted, we are driven to execute it as quickly as possible. As much as possible we try to shoehorn, the […]
“A La Carte” Comp Plans
Every once in a while, some of us go to a 5-star restaurant. Rather than ordering off the menu, choosing appetizers, soups, entrees, sides, desserts, wines, piecemeal; we ask the chef to prepare a complete meal. The chef makes the choices for everything from soup to nuts (literally), making sure we get a complete meal (where we might skip things ordering from the menu). The chef makes choices such that each dish complements and works with the other, even making the wine choices. The focus is on a once in a lifetime dining experience, skipping nothing. While these experiences are […]