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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
How Do You Help Your Customers Make Money?
Ultimately, in every B2B sales conversation, we have to answer one question, “How do we help our customers make money?” Every business (for or not for profit) has a mission, strategies, goals and objectives. But ultimately, their ability to continue to execute their mission is based on their ability to make money. It’s that ability that funds everything they do. When they stop making money, they cease to exist. As sales people, we have to be able to answer that question–ideally, we put together a business base that quantifies how much money we help them make. I write a lot about […]
Leading From Behind A Desk
There are too many managers who “lead” from behind a desk. Here’s how to recognize one: They haven’t visited a customer in the past 30 days. They haven’t talked to a customer on the phone in the past week. Their interest in customers is the transaction/deal, not the value created for the customer. Their sales people are afraid to have them visit customers because they don’t create value. Their primary source of information on “what’s happening,” comes from CRM, or reports. They overload their people with paperwork and administration. The majority of their time is spent in internal meetings with […]
Who Are We Building Relationships With?
As sales people, we know relationships are important. I hear comments all the time, “Sales is a relationship business.” “Sales is a people business.” We are learning the importance of networking to increase the breadth and depth of our relationships. We nurture those relationships to build trust and confidence with out customers. In building relationships, we use terms like “connecting,” “creating value,” “earning the right.” We seek to develop relationships where we become trusted advisors. But sometimes, I wonder, “Who are we building relationships with?” Sometimes, I think we are building relationships with our devices and technologies. I think we […]
I Fired A Customer This Week
Like any sales/business professional, our customers are very dear to us. We spend a lot of time prospecting to find them. We work to identify how we can help them solve their problems, grow, address new opportunities, or improve. We try to create great value, and, in turn develop highly profitable relationships. But every once in a while, those relationships may no longer make sense. Something that may have been great in the past, just no longer works. There comes a time to part ways. It’s tough to recognize this. Momentum and pride may tend to blind us, it certainly […]
Insight, Triggers, And Connecting The Dots
Top performing executives, business development, and sales professionals have an incredible, almost innate ability to “connect the dots.” It’s really what sets them apart from everyone else. This ability to connect the dots is the ability to instantly assess: This is what’s happening in this person’s markets/industry. This is what’s happening in their company. This is what’s happening to them as individuals. These are events that are occurring right now–that impact them directly or indirectly. Here are the problems/challenges they face. This is what I can do to help them do something about it. This is why they should do […]
When Will We Stop Talking About The Technology?
It seems virtually every discussion I get into about advances in sales, marketing, or business eventually gets to technology. I guess it’s sexy and cool to talk about neat technologies and other things we leverage. It’s cool to show mobile devices, display screens, wearables, and other sorts of things. They are things we can embrace and start to use, then subsequently blame, when they don’t produce results. Or we can move technology to technology, always claiming, “just wait, this one is it.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m really a geek/nerd. I’m an early adopter of virtually every new technologies. I have closets filled […]