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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
Ramping Up The Results Of Your Sales Calls
If you are a high performance sales professional, you always prepare your calls rigorously. Hacks are those that have mastered the art of “shooting from the lip,” but accomplish very little in each call as well as running the risk of aggravating the customer. I know none of you are hacks–they don’t read and learn, so they will never see this post. So let’s focus on how you can turn the crank further on sales call effectiveness. You’re in the middle of a deal. You’ve mad a number of sales calls on various people involved in the decision-making process. You’re slowly […]
How Should Sales People Be Challenging Their Customers?
Challenging, providing insight, getting your customers to think about their businesses differently is critical to engaging customers and creating value. My friends at OpenView Labs asked me, “How should sales people be challenging their customers?” For the rest of the article, take a look at OpenView Labs’ site: How Should Sales People Be Challenging Their Customers?
Going To Extremes
I read an outstanding, but frightening post entitle The Future Of Marketing Is Extreme! Eric Wittlake outlines: “We are inundated by marketing today. In a bid to stand out in the sea of marketing competing for our attention, marketing continues to move to the extremes.” He then goes on to outline several areas of Extreme Impact: Extreme Interruption Extreme Technology Extreme Shock Extreme Blend (I originally read this as Extreme Bland—I actually think I’m right) Extreme Value (I initially thought this was good, but it really means free) It’s not just marketing that is going to extremes, this seems pervasive in […]
Radical Simplification
There’s no doubt, the world and business is more complex and this is unlikely to stop. Our customers struggle with managing complexity–though pragmatically, it may be just how do they get from day-to-day. Within our own organizations, the same issues are at play. And last, but not least, our own jobs as sales and marketing professionals are complex. We’re pulled in many directions, we have conflicting goals, not enough time–and then those damn prospects and customers! I’m struck by the approaches many pundits, consultants, solution providers take in trying to “help” us deal with the complexity. We (I’ll include myself–sometimes I […]
Persuasion And Communication
You can’t be a great sales professional–or even a great leader without the ability to persuade! Persuasion is critical to inspiring people, motivating them to change, getting them to consider new ideas or new opportunities. We persuade in different ways. We tell stories, we use logical discussion, we present facts and data. We tap into people’s brains, hearts, and emotions. We leverage others to help us persuade, sometimes creating a movement to overwhelm any resistance. Persuasion often takes time, there is back and forth, we test and refine our argument. We encounter obstacles and resistance, maybe retreat for a few […]
Reclaiming Our 70% Of The Customer Buying Process
I wrote about 70% Of Buying Process Completed Without Sales Involvement! There were a lot of reactions, but my friend Bob Apollo of Inflection Point made some astute observations, which provoked me to talk about reclaiming our 70% of the customer buying process. In truth, our organizations are already involved in the 70% that customers are performing without sales. That is if we are paying attention to the way our prospects and customers find information. (Fingers crossed) Hopefully, your organizations have rich marketing and content strategies, if you don’t you are truly disadvantaged. Through sophisticated content management and nurturing, our companies are–or should be influencing the […]