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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
Fun With Value Propositions
Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to talk and write a lot about value propositions. I’ve seen a lot of approaches and thought it would be great to create a template, a customizable silver bullet, if you will, that sales people can cut and paste to save time in developing their own value propositions. In using this template, we’ve discovered a “best practice” is to apply it unchanged, but to literally cut and paste it. The benefits of this are self evident–it really engages the customer in creating your unique value proposition. (Cut here)______________________________________ Dear Occupant […]
Can Value Propositions Be Generic?
My friend Christian Mauer has written an interesting post entitled, “Can Value Propositions Be Generic?” I can’t resist weighing in. The purpose of a value proposition is to help the customer understand What’s In It For Them (WIIFM) for implementing your solution. The value proposition is what the customer uses to compare alternatives–so clearly to win, your value proposition has to be superior in meeting their requirements. So does the Value Proposition need to be unique? Well – it depends. How’s that for taking a strong position? Here’s the problem with many of these discussions, Value Is In The Eye Of The Beholder. It is meaningless […]
Selling Is About Change And Change Management
I wonder why we never talk much about change and change management–except when it is happening to us. When it happens to us, we usually are very uncomfortable and resist it. But at its core, isn’t sales really about change for our customers? As sales professionals we are facilitating our customers in changing what they do or how they operate. We are asking them to abandon what they are currently doing, convincing them to do something differently–hopefully to make them better or to allow them to address new opportunities. As part of our sales process, how often do we talk […]
Is This Meeting A Good Use Of Your Prospect And Customer’s Time?
I read a post from Miller Heiman on “How Do You Know If You Are Wasting Time With Propects.” It’s a good article encouraging focus on your “sweet spot.” You should read it. However, as I reflected on the article, it struck me that perhaps this is too confining. It continues to be “me, the sales person, centric.” It focuses on not wasting “my time,” but doesn’t address the issue of “are we wasting the customer or prospect’s time?” If we pose the issue differently, would we set the stage for producing a different and much more positive result? What […]
The Courage To Admit You Are Wrong
I’m continuing my barnstorming tour of Ireland and meeting with Irish Technology Executives. Yesterday I was hosted by the very gracious people at the NSC Campus in Cork. I had the privilege of sharing the podium with another inspiring CEO–Pat Phelan of MaxRoam. Pat’s presentation of the MaxRoam story was fascinating. I was really struck by Pat’s description of having to completely change the direction of MaxRoam early in their formation. At formation, the team had a strategy of establishing the MaxRoam brands and products around the world. He and his team pursued those strategies aggressively and he continued to […]
Intensity, Clarity, and Purposefulness
This week, I have the privilege of meeting with a number of Ireland’s leading technology executives, thanks to the hard work of Niall Devitt and Donagh Kiernan. Yesterday, I had the privilege to share the podium with two outstanding CEO’s, Kevin O’Leary of Qumas, and Paddy Holahan of Newbay Software. Each spoke of building their companies and entering the global markets. While they are in different businesses and have very different strategies, I was struck by some common themes that served as the foundation to their success. The first thing that struck me was the absolute clarity of who they, […]