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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
Are You Doing The Work?
We’re all busy. Look at anyone’s calendar, they are filled with meetings. We fill our time with activities—email, tweeting, research, CRM, more meetings–some with customers, more email, forecast and pipeline reviews, deal reviews, presentations, conference calls…… The list goes on. Our time is so valuable, we sit in meetings, not paying attention because we have to email, text, or tweet. Thank goodness for multitasking! We complain about it, we look harried, we feel time pressured, yet we revel in the busyness. In too many organizations, one’s worth seems to be measured by the number of meetings attended. We’re busy, but are […]
Stop Selling If They Aren’t Your Customer!
Wally Bock and I were talking the other day, he posed the question, “What if your products and services are the wrong choice for the customer?” My knee jerk reaction was, “They aren’t your customer!” Too often, we find ourselves in a situation where our solutions aren’t right for the customer. Perhaps they aren’t right, period, or they aren’t right, right now. But if they aren’t right then they aren’t a customer/prospect, and little we can do will change this (The “aren’t right, right now, issue is something we can do something about, but that’s another blog post.) Yet we […]
Are You A Real Sales, Marketing, or Business Pro?
I’m a tremendous fan of Steve Pressfield’s writing. If you haven’t read him, pick up a copy of The War Of Art or Turning Pro. I reread each a several times a year. Every once in a while, when I seem to lose my focus or purpose, rereading either helps me rethink what being a Professional is about. It helps me rediscover what I am here to achieve, As we wrap up the year, reflecting on what it is to be a professional is important, so I thought it would be useful to highlight the qualities Steve says the Professional possess. […]
What Can You Do Right Now?
Sometimes we get stuck. We don’t know what to do. We’re executing our process, we’re doing everything we can, but we’re stuck. The customer isn’t moving. Sometimes we’re stuck because of ourselves. We’re avoiding something–it may be a tough or unpleasant task. Sometimes, it’s seeking perfection, doing a little more research, refining our plan. We worry about what might happen, how a customer might react, what might go wrong. Often we get stuck because we are afraid to fail. Sometimes we fool ourselves, we make ourselves look busy, we are doing lots of things, but we aren’t moving forward. We’ve […]
You’re The Expert–Aren’t You?
Customers value sales people for their expertise. They want sales people to bring ideas, to help solve their problems, to help them improve and do better. It used to be, the expertise customers valued was sales’ knowledge about their products and solutions. Sales people would present information about their products and how they could help the customer. Software that helped provide more timely information for decision-making. Manufacturing systems to improve quality, productivity, and reduce costs, components that provided the customer products performance capabilities or functions needed by their customers. Customers wanted to learn about new products and solutions. The primary […]
What Value Have You Created This Year?
It’s December, we’re all caught up in a frenzy of activity—closing those final deals we need to achieve our goals, preparing for a fast start for next year, then preparing for the Holidays…. Now here I am, adding one more activity to your already over loaded “To Do List.” But I think it’s an important one. Take some time to analyze: “What value have you created this year?” Here are some specific things you should be doing: 1. Look at the top 5-10 deals you won this year. Go back to the customers to see where they are at. Have they achieve the goals […]