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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
Being Helpful To Customers Must Be For Profit!
I write a lot about being customer focused, about helping customer identify new opportunities, look at new ways of growing, assess new ways of running their businesses. I’ve long advocated being consultative, facilitating the customer buying process, and creating value in every interchange. A lot of the discussion focuses on “being helpful to customers.” This creates confusion and lots of questions, “I’m accountable for selling my company’s products and services, how will I achieve my goals if I focus on being helpful to the customer?” “If we focus on being helpful to our customers and not pushing our products, how […]
Sitting On The Customer’s Side Of The Desk
Not long ago a sales person called be with an idea that I thought was interesting. He was “pitching” a concept, it was a little intriguing but I had to interrupt him, saying, “What you are saying is very interesting to me, however this is the issue we face with our customers, here’s how we see things, this is what we’d like to achieve.” The sales person responded, “We really see the issues as this, and this is how we approach it.” I responded, “I understand, but we may be a little different, I’m interested in what you are saying, […]
Customers Don’t Know How To Buy!
One of the biggest mistakes sales people make is overestimating their customers’ knowledge of how to buy. As a result, sales people miss the opportunity to support the customer in their buying process. I believe this is one of the most overlooked areas in which sales people can create distinctive value, enhance their relationship, and start moving into the “trusted advisor role.” Think about it, for many complex B2B solutions, how many times in their careers does a customer make a purchasing decision? If you look at major software solutions like ERP, Financial, CRM/Sales 2.0, Manufacturing, and other solutions—a customer […]
Dear Mr. Customer: I Try Hard To Be A Great Sales Professional……
Last week, I met with a sales team I’d been coaching on a large opportunity. For the most part, they were doing everything right. They had focused on identifying all the critical business impact, change management, and related issues facing the customer. They had presented a business based solution, presenting a sound business case, great implementation plan, and a compelling reason for the customer to take action. They had identified some potential legal and compliance issues that could have a serious impact on the customer—financially and within the perceptions of the community the customer served. They demonstrated how they would […]
Buyer Persona’s — A Great Starting Point For Sales!
I’m a tremendous fan of Buyer Personas*. Anyone who isn’t leveraging this concept heavily in all marketing and sales programs is missing a tremendous opportunity. Strong buyer personas is the foundation for marketing programs, content development, and nurturing potential prospects. Buyer Persona’s are a great starting point for sales people. After my post, “You Need To Know What’s Keeping Them Up At Night,” I got a lot of questions on “how do you figure all of this out?” Buyer Persona’s help you begin to understand this. They help you understand a number of things that impact people in the role […]
Are We UnderPerforming Our Potential?
Last month’s Harvard Business Review focus on, of all things, Failure. One of the most interesting articles was “Why Leaders Don’t Learn From Success.” It’s absolutely a must read for everyone—but if you have been (or think you have been) very successful in the past few years, do yourselves a favor and read it. There are three major issues identified: When we succeed, we tend to give too much credit to our talents, our model, or strategy, and too little to external factors and luck. Success can make us so overconfident that we believe we don’t need to change anything. […]