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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
The “Street Price” Is All That Counts
Go to any bazaar or souk in the Middle East or Africa, go to a marketplace in Latin or South America, go to the famed “Silk Alley” in Beijing and you quickly learn the difference between the marked price and the “street” price. No one pays attention to the marked price. The starting point for discussion is the street price and the perception of value is based on the presumed street price. So when I go to Silk Alley (which I try to avoid, but am sometimes dragged to) and see something “priced” at 1000 Yuan, my assessment of value is never based […]
If The Customer Doesn’t Want To Buy, Discounts Won’t Help
We’ve been working with a customer, diligently talking about their problems and concerns. Educating them about our solution. Trying to move them through our sales process. They’ve been interested, somewhat. They’ve met with us, asked us the right questions, perhaps given some buying signals, but things drag, the deal becomes stuck. The customer isn’t saying no, but they aren’t moving forward. It’s just hanging there, we want to get them to buy! So we play the discount card. Too many sales people think resistance is about money, so unilaterally, they offer the discount to break the deal free. “Buy now […]
Does Insight Selling Require “Scars?”
We’re supposed to bring our customers insight–opportunities they are missing, new ways to run their business, new ways to grow. No one argues that. We make sure we have sales people with the right behaviors and skills. We prep our sales people with training, information, case studies, data, teaching pitches. We charge them to engage their customers in a different way, providing insight. They do their homework, research, prepare for the call. They are meeting the “C-Level” for that all important meeting. The appointed hour comes, they muster the courage, meet with the customer , ready to provide insight. Then the […]
“We Don’t Have The Budget”
“We don’t have the budget” strikes fear into the hearts of all sales people. Asking for budget is one of the standard BANT qualifying questions. No budget, we disqualify and move on. But in doing this, we walk away from huge opportunities. In fact, a huge number of sales result in situations where there has been no budget. If we are embracing the Insight Selling, many times we are making the customer aware of opportunities to grow, opportunities they may be missing, ways to improve their business they may have never thought of. The very issue that they have never […]
My Best Mentor
I saw a post on this topic today. It caused me to pause and reflect. I’ve been very fortunate to have had some outstanding mentors. Naturally, I thought of my Dad and Mom, they certainly are in the top 5. There have been dozens of people that I’ve considered to be mentors, they’ve been in my life for a period of time, had an important impact. Some have been very famous in the business world, I’ve actually hung around some pretty cool people who for reasons unknown to me took an interest. But most of my mentors have been colleagues, […]
Have You Earned A Response?
Hopefully, every sales person is prospecting. Whether it’s email campaigns, phone campaigns, or something else, we are constantly reaching out. We are constantly trying to find new opportunities to engage customers. We get frustrated because they don’t respond. Or we may be working with an existing prospect, they may not be getting back to us. We keep calling, emailing, we’re frustrated. Somehow, we have it in our minds that people should respond to us. After all, we’ve sent the clever email or voice mail, we’ve tried to be creative or provocative. Possibly they seemed to have been interested before., “Yeah, […]