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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
A Plan Based On “Bluebirds” Is Not A Plan
Every sales person loves a “bluebird.” Those are those orders that suddenly appear, we didn’t know about them, they weren’t in our pipeline, but every once in a while the Earth, Moon, Sun and Stars align and a customer wants to buy, without our ever being involved. Bluebirds happen, we gladly accept the order and proclaim victory when they happen. Bluebirds are parts of what happens with every sales person and in every territory. However, we can’t build a plan based on bluebirds. If we did, our plan is pure wishful thinking. As sales professionals it is our responsibility to maximize […]
Sales Management Review Cadence
I’m not sure anyone looks forward to the Sales Management Review (sometimes these are called QBR’s, but there are other reviews). It’s unfortunate, because there’s a huge amount of value in the review process–both for sales people and managers. There are lots of problems with the way we conduct these, which create the anxiety, and the often valid assessment they are a waste of time. They include: Poorly defined objectives/outcomes. Mixed confusing objectives. Absence of preparation on everyone’s parts. No agenda, wandering aimlessness. Mixing meetings—the objectives of pipeline reviews, deal reviews, sales call reviews, account territory reviews are different, but we mix […]
Buying Happens In The Absence Of Selling
In my post, Principles Of Sales, Part 1, Interactions Between People, Brian MacIver (@Palayo) made a brilliant observation–frankly something that I hadn’t paid much attention to. We tend to think Buying and Selling go hand in hand. But as Brian points out, there’s a huge amount of buying that happens without selling! It’s easy to understand–think of all the ecommerce sites (both B2C and B2B), think of rich electronic trading networks, or even the simple “re-order/re-stock” transactions that happen every day. It’s easy to think this is limited to “transactional or commoditized items,” but increasingly we see it in more complex buying. […]
Principles Of Sales, Part 1—Interactions Between People
I wrote The Not So New Principles Of Sales, identifying some of the underlying and enduring principles of great selling. I thought I’d dive into each of the principles a little more deeply. I’m still formulating my thinking in these areas, so I’d really like to stimulate a discussion. The first principle I identified was: Selling is about an interactions between people. Yeah, we can’t take them out of the equation. So there are messy things like relationships, trust, communicating, engaging, and collaborating with people–customers, teammates, and others. Technically, you might nit-pick and start talking about web-based shopping carts, electronic […]
Agile Sellers Always Have A Plan—And A Plan B…..
Consistent top performers, Agile Sellers, always have a plan and focus on the effective/efficient execution of that plan. That’s one of the things that sets them apart from all others. Amazingly, too many sales people really don’t have a plan. That is they never start with the “end in mind,” identifying all the things that have to be done to reach the goal. They don’t do the research or analysis to determine the most effective means of achieving their goal. For too many, the vision for the plan is the next step. They know what the next step is, perhaps the one […]
How Would You Sell If You Weren’t “The Salesperson?”
Probably more “selling,” happens outside the sales profession than within the profession. That “selling,” isn’t measured by revenue or quote, but it happens every minute of every hour of every day. Think about it—it’s getting buy-in to your idea in the company. It’s getting people on your team to want to be on your team, share your vision, help you achieve the goal. It’s listening to someone rave about a movie or restaurant, and putting it on your list to do. We see examples of people doing this in our business and professional lives all the time. They don’t know anything about their […]