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
Giving The Customer More Than They Paid For
We’ve long had the idea that a value proposition has to do with “exceeding customer expectations” or “giving the customer more than they paid for.” I’ve held that position but am questioning it. Instead, perhaps the real value proposition is giving the customer exactly what they want/need at a price they are willing to pay for it. And doing this consistently in every interchange. I first started thinking about this during one of my ritual visits to Starbucks. As background, I love Starbucks–the consistency of experience, the speed of service, and an always consistent Grande Dark Roast coffee (with no […]
Value Prop Aligned With What The Customer Values?
Not long ago, in speaking with a top executive, he expressed great frustration with all of the sales people trying to sell a major new system for his team. Shaking his head, he said, “Dave, they just don’t understand what they are trying to do. All they keep talking about is how much money they are going to save me. I really don’t care about that, I want to know how they are going to help drive my revenue growth!” It was an interesting situation. The team was an extremely high performance team. Every performance metric showed performance far ahead […]
Your People’s Performance Is A Reflection Of Your Performance
It’s impossible to be a top performing manager if your people aren’t performing! Yeah, I know that elicits a “Duuggghhh” response, but I’m not sure many managers have really internalized this. It’s far too easy to blame your people–“They aren’t doing the right things, They’re lazy, They may not be the right people, ……” All that may, in fact, be absolutely true! But when you peel things back a little, asking, “Why is it this way?” “Who’s accountable for this?” It always comes back to the manager. Every manager’s job is to get their people performing at the highest levels possible. […]
What’s Project Management Have To Do With Buying/Selling?
As sales professionals, we don’t tend to talk much about project management–at least from our customers’ points of views. Sure, within our own organizations we have lots of project going on–but somehow we don’t tie project management to the work we do with our customers. There’s a lot of talk about the customer buying journey, frankly, I’m rethinking my views about a lot of the buying journey discussions. But one of the most important parts, at least for sales, is when the customer commits to change. At some point, the customer determines, “Our current ways of working are no longer […]
Sell The Vision, It’s Easier Than Selling The Product!
I’ve never sold a computer or licensed software in my career. I’ve never sold consulting services in my career. Frankly, it’s really difficult selling those things. Take licensed or even SaaS software products. You have to know about things like GUI’s, software architectures, installation, coding, memory utilization, caching, pipelining, and all sorts of little details. You have to be able to discuss each transaction and how each operation works, and why you chose to implement things the way you have—and why it’s superior to other approaches. To be effective, you have to know your competition’s products as well. You have to understand […]
Buyer Self Sufficiency
I read a fascinating HBR Article, “How More Accessible Information Is Forcing B2B Sales To Adapt.” It’s a great article by authors I deeply respect. It’s a relatively sophisticated discussion of the digitally savvy buyer, and the increasing trend of “buyer self sufficiency.” It both reinforces, “Buyers are 57-50% through their buying process before they want to see sales people,” but also acknowledges various levels of buyer self sufficiency and their willingness to engage sales people earlier, based on lower self sufficiency or different needs. As I read and re-read the article, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the concept of […]