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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
It’s Never JUST A Sales Problem!
We often get called by execs, “We’ve got a sales problem! We need your help,” or some variation on the theme. It could be, “Sales isn’t doing their job,” “They aren’t making their numbers, what’s wrong with those sales guys?” As we start to understand the situation, it always comes down to, “Revenue/orders are down,” “We aren’t making the numbers,” “We’re losing share,” “We’re losing customers…..” “We see sales missing it’s goals year after year after year!” Since sales is responsible for getting orders, generating revenue, acquiring customers, and growing the business–if we aren’t doing those things, it’s easy to […]
3 Behaviors That Drive Successful Sales People
Recently, I read a HBR Post by Ryan Fuller, 3 Behaviors That Drive Successful People. My knee jerk reaction was, “Well duhhhh thanks for stating the obvious.” In a kinder, gentler moment (I do have them every once in a while), I thought maybe it isn’t so obvious. The findings in the research, “sales success is highly correlated with three things: Spending enough time with customers and prospects. Having a large and healthy network in your own organization. Spending time and getting attention from your own manager and other senior people in your own organization.” Let me add my take […]
Stalled Deals?
We all have them, we know what they look like. They’re stuck. We look at aging reports and see them staying in the same stage of the pipeline, not moving forward, getting older, moldier as time passes. Sometimes, I see entire pipeline’s clogged up with stalled deals–I feel like calling “Roto Rooter.” The longer a deal is stalled, the less likely it’s going to happen. There are a lot of things that cause deals to stall, let me review a few that seem to be the biggest–with some ideas about how to free them up. They Aren’t Real Deals: Probably the biggest […]
If You Aren’t Building Value, Someone Else Is!
Well, actually, even if you are building value, someone else still is. We win by creating superior, differentiated value–relevant to the customer. But I’m getting ahead of myself. If you’ve been reading this blog for any period of time, you know that in order to win–we must go far beyond our value propositions. We must build and create value in every interaction with prospects and customers. This starts from the very first time they may become aware of us–whether through searching and finding our websites, word of mouth from another customer, social engagement on any of the social platforms, meeting at […]
Stop Wasting Time On Forecasts!
Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time talking and corresponding with lots of people on forecasts. An article I wrote several years ago, The Most Used, Useless Metric In Sales has been republished in several venues–creating some discussion. With clients, with people in email (Adam, thanks for reminding me), and others, there have been lots of discussions about forecasting. To be honest, I think we spend way too much time on forecasts. To my way of thinking, the forecasting discussion a manager has with the team shouldn’t last much longer than an hour each month–if that. But […]
We Caught ‘Em, You Skin ‘Em (The Saga Between Marketing And Sales — Part 2)
In my last post, I outlined how buying has changed. I created a case for engaging our customers differently, more effectively. But what’s this mean for what marketing and sales actually do? How do we work, together, to engage our customers more effectively? Marketing and sales can no longer work separately, but must collaborate in facilitating the customer buying process. Those things we relied on in the past—strong brands, great products, competitive price/value proposition are now table stakes. Now the differentiator is the customer buying experience—how marketing and sales engages the customer together. So what does this mean to marketing […]