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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
Principles Of Sales Part 3-Selling Is About Change
I’ll continue to expand my discussion of The Not So New Principles Of Sales, addressing the third principle, Selling Is About Change. “Selling is about change. Both parties must want something different than what they now have or do. If either party sees no need for change, then nothing happens.” In a way, it seems like this is one of those “Duhhhhh” type statements, it should be obvious. As sales professionals, we are trying to get our customers to change—change vendors, change the way they do things, change their businesses. The odd thing, is that most sales people don’t tend to […]
Sales Training And Human Interaction
Annually, billions are invested in sales skills training. On top of that, millions are spent on books on sales techniques, thousands of articles are written. People are constantly looking for an edge, “What are the ways I can get by the gatekeepers?” “How do I craft an opening sentence that captures the prospect’s attention and gets me a meeting?” “What’s the best way to handle the objection?” “How do I close the customers?” In too much of the training on sales techniques, the customer is an abstraction, the object upon which we execute our techniques, bending to our will — at least if […]
Salesperson Bites Dog, Dog Gets No Insight!
I have to confess to a shameless manipulation of you, the reader. Many of you are reading this post, attracted by the headline and wondering, “I always knew Dave was a little whacked out, but what could he possibly be thinking with this post?” A few compassionate souls are worried about the poor dog, wanting to find out if it survived the vicious attack. Like many writers, often, I write a provocative title to my posts. I recognize everyone is busy, but hope the provocative title entices the reader to open the post and read. Every writer does this to varying […]
Your Competitor May Be An App!
As consumers, everyday we see apps, great on-line stores and other technology enabled experiences that make our buying experiences easier and often more pleasant. It’s so much easier to check out reviews–even if they are from strangers, then to deal with a sales person. It’s harder to find them in retail stores, when you do, they may not be able to answer your questions, but they are always asking about “ringing the sale up at the cash register.” This phenomena isn’t limited to B2C, we see more of the same things happening in B2B. We already know that more than […]
Do You Know The Answers To These Three Questions?
As you know, I’m constantly doing deal reviews with sales people. Each review is similar. The sales person has spent a lot of time understanding needs and requirements, positioning their solution to best fulfill their needs and requirements. Most know who the competitors are and are trying to position themselves favorably against the competition. In the reviews, there’s always a lot of background on our relationships with the customer, the activities to date. There’s a lot of discussion about upcoming activities. At some point, I always ask the same 3 questions. This is where things start going off the rails. […]
Lot’s Of Activity, No Results!
Everyone I encounter is very busy. Virtually everyone I meet works long hours. Their schedules are filled with meetings, calls, all sorts of things. Many people seem to wear their “busyness” as a badge of honor, as if “real business people do a dozen meetings a day, handle 300 emails and make a dozen phone calls.” They seem to look down on those that don’t. But then you start looking at the results of those activities. What outcomes are they producing–whether it’s meeting their quotas, whether it’s developing their people/providing the right leadership and coaching, or anything else. When we align the […]