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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
“Our Product Is Better Than Theirs” — A Losing Strategy
The other day, I was having breakfast with a frustrated executive. He had just reviewed a playbook that had been developed and was being launched to sales. It was the result of an effort between product management, marketing, and the sales enablement team. There was a lot wrong with the playbook. The biggest problem was it was strictly product focused. It educated sales people about every function, feature, feed, and speed of the products, not overlooking the most minute detail (don’t forget to talk about the 20 colors….) One of the most worrisome aspects of the playbook was the comparison between their products […]
Burying Our Heads In The Sand
Nobody likes to admit they have a problem. I suppose it’s human nature, or at least in the world of sales part of the inherent optimism sales people must have to thrive. Individually and organizationally, we don’t like to admit we have problems for a number of reasons. Admitting it brings a huge amount of attention, much of it unwanted. People want the problem fixed—eliminated! Sometimes, they offer to help. In any case, admitting that we have problems shines a bright light, creating great discomfort for us. Did we do something wrong? Did we make an error? What are we […]
All Your Help Is Killing Me!!
Over the past years, sales people have become a prime target for “help.” It’s no wonder, sales people are key to the organization’s growth and revenue performance. But sales hasn’t been performing, the data around quota performance for sales people and organizations is appalling. On the other hand, sales faces huge challenges. Profound changes in the way customers buy, huge difficulties reaching and engaging prospects, more competition, faster sales cycles, fewer resources, time compression…… The list goes on. The challenges in “selling,” working with customers through their buying process are greater and more complex. Layer fast changing customers, markets and […]
Bits And Pieces—June 5, 2016
The past couple of weeks, I’ve pretty much focused on the launch of Sales Manager Survival Guide. In the first 24 hours after the release, the book hit the number 1 spot on Amazon’s “Hot New Books In Sales And Marketing.” More importantly, I had committed to donating 100% of the profits from the sale of the book to Charity:Water. I don’t have a full accounting of sales yet, but so far we’ve raised just about $1700. Don’t forget, from June1-August 31, I’ll be contributing 25% of the profits to Charity:Water, so you still have an opportunity to Get Smart […]
There Is Only One Answer
I get emails everyday from people seeking answers. Likewise, I read dozens of articles from people purporting to have the answers. The questions cover hundreds of areas: How do I get a person to answer the phone? How do I get a meeting? How do I differentiate my solutions from the competition? What’s my/our value proposition? How do I make sure I’m dealing with the right decisionmaker? How do I avoid discounting and defend my price? How do I make sure I hit my numbers? How do I make a killer sales call? How do I create a winning strategy? […]
Sales Manager, How Are You Performing?
I want to have a heart to heart with Sales Managers/Executives. Sales people and others can listen in if you want. We need to have a serious discussion about your performance. Yeah, I know we always tend to talk about the performance of our people, but we need to focus on your own performance. After all, the data on sales management turnover is pretty disturbing—the average longevity in the job is 20 months. Sales management, at every level, is a tough job. We are expected to perform—that is make the numbers. If we don’t, executive management will quickly look for […]