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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
Buying Process Or Selling Process Or Sales Methodology
Recently, I’ve seen a renewed interest or discussions on Buying Process, Selling Process, Sales Methodology. Part is driven by an old article of mine, Sales Process or Sales Methodology. There still seems to be a lot of confusion, some thinking we have to focus on one or the other. And then, unfortunately, there are too many, that while they might know the buying process or have a sales process or have a sales methodology–they simply don’t use them, instead choosing the Bumper Car approach to engaging the customer and selling. I thought I’d try to walk through these topics—at a […]
Leveraging Your Information Advantage
In the “good old days” of selling (if there ever were any), a lot of sales people reveled in their “information advantage.” Prospects and customers relied on sales people to educate them on products and solutions. Those days are long gone, customers are self educating on the web. They no longer have to rely on sales people for that information. Unfortunately, too many sales people are stuck in the past. If all they can do is pitch products/solutions, they have lost their information advantage. The customers are as knowledgeable (or more) than they. These sales people have lost the ability […]
2018 Sales Management Critical Issues, Part 2
The first post in this short series focused on Talent Management. Without a strong base of the right people in each role, it’s impossible to develop and sustain high performance in the organization. This post, and the next one, will focus on various issues of complexity. Understanding the impact of complexity on each of us, our partners, and our customers; doing everything we can do to radically simplify the things we do are the next areas of management focus. Complexity has a devastating impact on performance. Two of the critical data points we watch include: Time Available for Selling, and […]
Leadership, Vulnerability, And Being Human
For some reason, articles on “Leaders must show vulnerability,” have been flooding my in-box recently. I get it, leaders must show vulnerability, but what does that mean? As I think of these articles and dozens of others on other leadership qualities, I wonder if we make this far more complicated than it need be. The authors of these articles are just describing behaviors they see in leaders, attaching multisyllabic words to them (because that’s what writers and consultants do.). But at it’s core, one of the characteristics of great leaders is that they are human. Somehow, leaders and followers seem […]
Running To The Edge Of A Cliff At 200MPH!
Recently, I was talking to a group about prospecting. I wanted to create a way they could visualize the importance of ALWAYS prospecting. They had reasonably good pipelines, most were consumed on working those deals. As you might guess, most were doing everything they could to avoid prospecting. They were using their pipelines and the work they were doing to close those deals as excuses not to prospect. Their sales cycle was roughly 6 months away. Somehow, they kept rationalizing, “I’m busy now, I’ll worry about filling my pipeline in a few months. I presented all sort of data around, […]
Forecast Accuracy, Peeling The Onion
We are barely a week into the New Year, but yesterday I found myself in a conversation with an executive team about the forecast. They were looking at the January forecast and starting to think about the quarterly forecast. Sales executives are obsessed with forecasting and forecast accuracy. In my past lives, as a sales executive, I don’t know how many hours I spent looking at the forecast. I’d play endless games with my sales ops VP, controller, and the RVPs. We’d have spread sheets and other reports, looking at different puts and takes on the forecast, trying to figure […]