Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
70% Of Buying Process Completed Without Sales Involvement!
I’m sorry if I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but I’m getting tired of this statement! Yes, lots of surveys show that customers are engaging sales people later and later in their buying process. There are tremendous resources on the web that provide much information to the customer, enabling them to self educate, get opinions of others, and to narrow their alternatives to a short list. The web, social business, active communities of users can offer tremendous convenience and value to customers. It also displaces much of the traditional role of the sales person in teaching their customers […]
The Single Worst Thing A Sales Person Can Do
My friends at OpenView Labs asked for my views on “bashing” the competition. As you might guess, I have some pretty strong opinions on it. To read the accompanying article, visit my friends at OpenView: The Single Worst Thing A Sales Person Can Do! There’s quite a discussion at the site, join in!
Understanding The Other Side, The Value Of Skepticism
Would you trust your lawyer if she took everything at face value? I hope not. Lawyers don’t take anything at face value, they are skeptical of our positions and dig for the facts, and obsess about the other side–their facts, positions, and strategies. We see this in other professions, as well. Athletes and professional sports teams analyze their opponents. They study their tactics, they understand their plays, they look for opportunity, they don’t underestimate them. We see the same with the military in developing their battle scenarios and plans. While I hate to position customers as “the other side,” I think […]
Moving From Value Creation To Value Co-Creation
As sales people we have been drilled and drilled in “Value Propositions.” Over time, our concepts of value propositions have changed–as they should. Value propositions used to be generic claims (usually generated by marketing) about value, perhaps statements about our products–things like “best quality,” “richest functionality,” “highest performance.” and so forth. At one point (decades ago), these generic generic value propositions became meaningless and undifferentiated as everyone started claiming the same. How were we to set ourselve apart? By the way, too many companies are still stuck in this mode! In the past 15-20 years, we have adopted the view that “value is in […]
People Don’t Dislike Sales People, They Dislike Bad Selling!
People don’t dislike sales people, they dislike bad selling! I wish I had said that, but it originally came from Andy Rudin—thanks for the great quote. There’s a lot of data going around about customers not wanting to engage sales people until very late in their buying process. The numbers vary, but they seem clustered around 70% of the buying process is completed before sales people are engaged. The implication is that somehow the sales person is no longer necessary, customers have other alternatives for getting information, evaluating alternatives, and developing a short list. Sales people complain, “I can’t get people […]
Getting Your People To Use The Skills And Knowledge They Already Have
I’m very fortunate to work with very talented sales executives and people. Most have very deep experience in selling. They’ve been through some of the best training programs around. However, despite having the skills and knowledge, they aren’t producing the results or achieving the goals they’ve established for themselves. It’s an odd thing. Based on the backgrounds they should have the ability to perform. They have the skills and knowledge, but they don’t seem to be applying it. They’re somehow stuck. As sales people get stuck, they try to figure out what’s going wrong, they analyze what’s happening all in the […]