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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
Dealing With Ambiguity
Things are so much easier when they are black or white, when there is a “right answer” to every question or issue we face. Unfortunately, in the real world of buying and selling, there are no right answers, there is no clear direction–either for us in selling or for our customers. One of the most important skills of high performing sales people is the ability to deal with ambiguity–both in how they work and in engaging customers, facilitating their buying process. I get calls and emails every day; I sit in meetings where people are looking for help and direction, […]
Don’t Get Distracted By The Numbers
As sales professionals, we’re obsessed with the “numbers.” Where are we year to date, what’s the forecast, what’s the pipeline look like, what are the activity levels, how many qualified leads do we have, and on and on and on. We’re constantly measuring, tweaking, analyzing, measuring. We look at numbers from all type of views–increasingly we leverage analytics to give us different perspectives and insights to the numbers. There’s no doubt, numbers are important. But all they are is numbers. The numbers help us identify issues, opportunities and problems. They are yardsticks to measure performance. Numbers don’t solve problems or […]
Closing The Gap–Achieving Our Goals!
We’re well into the second half now. The first half is behind us, many are breathing a sigh of relief. Did you make your numbers? Did you hit your targets? Have you achieved your Year To Date Quota? “What are you talking about Dave?” Some of you might be wondering, what point I’m trying to make. My point is top performers always focus on making the numbers–that is they want to make their goals this month, this quarter, and for the year. Every once in a while, even top performers might miss a monthly goal. As they move forward, they […]
“Target Close Date” Must Be Kept Sacred!
The “Target Close Date” is one of the most important aspects of pipeline, forecast, and deal integrity. Anything else in our deal strategy can change, but the Target Close Date must be kept as sacred! Now before I get everyone piling on, saying I’m totally unrealistic, that I don’t recognize the realities of sales, or that the customer is the key determinant of the close and it’s out of control; give me a chance to explain my position. There will always be good reason to change the target close date–but, that’s the point–there has to be good reason, any changes must […]
The Trial
For the salacious readers, no this isn’t a post gossiping on the courtroom antics of the most current troubled celebrity or politician (as much fun as it might be to comment on them). I wanted to address “trial programs,” that is programs we leverage to get the customer to actually use our products in a “trial” mode, before they commit to buy. Trial programs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They can be highly customized demos or benchmarks. They can be installing equipment or systems at a customer site, letting them use them for a period of time. […]
Surprise!!!
Surprise!!! It may be fun for a birthday party, but it’s never fun in sales. It means that somehow our carefully thought out approach has suddenly been thrown into disarray. The great progress we thought we were making has suddenly been washed away. We may have to go back to the drawing board, start all over. In the least we have to regroup and rethink our strategies. Surprises are a part of life in sales, our ability to manage, deal with, and recover from surprises is what separates top performers from everyone else. What can we do to avoid or […]