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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
Business Simplification–The Number 1 Job Of Sales Enablement
Most people talking about the Sales Enablement function agree the goal of Sales Enablement is to improve the productivity and overall performance of front line sales professionals. But after that, a lot of the discussion starts going a little haywire—at least to me. Usually, the discussion are around providing more to our sales team. They usually revolve around themes like: More and better training….. More and better content….. More and better tools….. More and better information about customers, competition, products, solution….. Ironically, sales people are drowning in “more!” We see time available for selling plummeting—primarily driven by internal distractions and […]
Relationships Are Secondary To Sales Effectiveness
I find myself in an unusual position. I’ve always been biased more to the science side of selling than the art side. I believe that selling is a disciplined process, that we can “engineer” those processes to increase our impact, customer engagement, and our effectiveness. I believe in sharp, rigorous execution of those processes in driving sales effectiveness and performance. Sales people promoting the old “Hail and Hearty,” sales is all about relationships and “when the going gets tough, the tough take a customer to lunch/golf,” have been somewhat abhorrent to me. But then, I’m a physicist/engineer by training–and somewhat […]
Getting The Most Out Of Deal Reviews
Sales people spend a majority of their time doing deals–finding them, qualifying them, helping their customers navigate the buying process until they make a decision, then ultimately getting the order. Since this is where most of our people live their lives, it’s where sales managers should be spending a lot of time. Unfortunately, too many sales managers don’t leverage deal review for their full value. Many of the deal reviews I participate in look more like interrogations. Sales managers pummeling the sales person for data: What solution are you selling? Why do they need it? Who’s involved in the decision? […]
Buyers Aren’t Killing Sales, Sales People Are Killing Sales!
I get so weary about the endless drivel about the “Death Of Sales.” Ironically, I never see a post from customers/buyers—even procurement—about the death of sales, though I’m sure many would appreciate it (a variant of “What do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean” joke —If you don’t know the answer, it’s “A good start!) Al the posts seem to come from sales “gurus” and technology suppliers, perhaps foreshadowing their own demise. What’s killing sales isn’t the buyer. It isn’t their ability to self educate, to engage other buyers in social conversations, or even to process […]
What If The Half Truths About Sales Were Absolutely True?
It’s not often I disagree with Anthony Iannarino’s take on things. He recently wrote an article, 10 Half Truths About Sales. I really don’t disagree with his views (perhaps this is a “Yes, and……” post). But what if we considered these to be 100% true, what does it mean for sales? The post is really reaching out to counter the dozens of ill informed posts about the “Death of Sales.” I’m always amused by these posts. They are usually written by vendors or consultants who sell to sales people. Ironically, they are foreseeing the deaths of their own businesses. Let’s […]
“We Can’t Solve Our Business Problems With Microscopes”
The single biggest challenge facing business executives in the coming years is managing complexity. As our businesses get bigger and more diverse, as our customers change and grow, as organizations become larger, more complex, as the amount of information and data grows, while our time to execute compresses, it becomes much more difficult to to manage the business. We develop models and frameworks to look at our businesses, figuring out where we need to tweak, what we need to change, how we need to focus. We take problems that are overwhelming in their complexity, breaking them down into components to […]