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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
Confusing Wants And Needs
Too often, both we sales people and our customers confuse wants and needs. They are similar but very different. The outcomes we get from selling to what our customers want, versus what they need are profoundly different. As sales people, we’re taught to understand customer needs–in reality, what happens is we focus on customer wants. When we sell to a customer’s wants, we are primarily focused on a “future state.” We and the customer talk about new things they would like to do, how they want to change their operations, new capabilities they would like to have. We can develop […]
How About Trying What Works?
I have to confess to being a little lazy. Let me explain, I work very hard, I put in long hours, but still I’m lazy. The reason I think I’m lazy is I want to accomplish all the things I do in as simple or easy way as possible. As a result, I read a lot, I talk to a lot of people, I attend workshops, I watch how other people get things done. Then I take things I see those people doing–the things that seem to be working for them, and I shamelessly copy, emulate, steal, and adapt these […]
Working Hard
I meet thousands of sales people a year. Most of them really care about the job they are doing. Most of them work very hard–they put in long hours, they are constantly busy. But too often, they miss their goals. It’s not through lack of effort, but much of it is they don’t approach the hard work of sales in the proper way. This may be worded strangely, but too often, I see sales people working hard to achieve their goal, but they don’t have a plan to achieve their goal. Here’s an example. This week I’m working with a […]
How Do They Buy?
I write constantly about the buying process, understanding how customers buy, how we align our sales process with the customer’s buying process, and how we create value through the whole thing. However, I realized I’ve overlooked something. It seems so obvious, but I’ve been surprised to see how few sales people understand this–at least early in the sales process. What I’m talking about is, “How do customers buy?” I mean, once they’ve made the decision for you, once you’ve settled on the price (or at least hopefully). What do they have to go through just to issue a purchase order […]
Proving That Math Works
Every week I sit in reviews of all types. It may be a corporation or start-up’s business plan or business strategy. It may be a sales person’s territory plan, forecast, or pipeline review. It may be a sales manager or executive reviewing their overall business plan. It may be a marketing manager reviewing a new marketing program and the expected results or a product manager talking about a product forecast or launch. In all of these people are making various claims about the numbers that will be achieved. But too often, it seems to be an exercise in proving that […]
Beginning, Finishing, The Space In Between
Yesterday I had the privilege of spending a day with the founding team of one of the most exciting start-ups I’ve seen in years. These people are sharp, excited, and have an idea that can change the lives of business professionals as much as the telephone, email, and social applications have. But, I can’t go further — for the moment. I made a pinky swear of confidentiality with the CEO. They are in stealth mode but should be launching in a few months. Stay tuned. But our meetings got me started thinking about how we–business professionals–spend certain parts of our […]