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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
SBWA — Selling By Wandering Around
In their 1982 book, In Search Of Excellence, Peters and Waterman coined the acronym: MBWA – Management By Wandering Around. The thought was for managers to literally get close to customers and their people by “wandering around.”I thought it time to resurface a variant of that theme: SBWA, Selling By Wandering Around. I’m constantly amazed by how little sales professionals to this.Too many sales people call on the same people, asking the same question, “Can I sell you anything today?” The more solutions oriented sales people will question needs and priorities, but make the same mistake of calling on the […]
Secrets To Success In 8 Words And 3 Minutes
With that title, you know I couldn’t have come up with this. Why use 8 words when you can use a 1000;-) Great TED presentation by Richard St. John on the secrets of success.
Social Selling: Live Q&A Webcast
Leveraging social selling and media is critical to all sales and marketing professionals. We’re all struggling with learning the concepts and how we should be adopting our strategies to incorporate social selling and social media. The folks at The Customer Collective are holding a terrific event. I encourage anyone who follows this blog to register and learn. The announcement is below, as well as a link to register. Take the time to learn and upgrade your skills! Social Selling: Live Q&A on Selling with Web 2.0 11 a.m. PST / 2 p.m. EST March 31, 2009 How do you take […]
So Now It’s Provocative Selling!
I hate to start blogs with a disclaimer or apology, but I was very excited with I saw Geoffrey Moore’s (et. al.) article in HBR on Provoke Your Customer. I deeply respect—in fact hang on most of his words, his writing and work. I’ve crossed every chasm, done the bowling alleys and survived almost every tornado. I was eager to be a student of his new writing about Provocative Selling! It is a provocative article-perhaps that was its intended purpose. Every sales professional should read it, study it and absorb it’s many good ideas. The most challenging notion in the […]
Announcing The Ultimate Sales Process Naming Contest!!
If you tend to take yourself too seriously, if you are a consultant who can’t laugh at yourself, please — I beg you — don’t read this column. It has no redeeming value, no real insight, it’s just intended to be fun and to poke some fun. I started thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I first read the HBR article about Provocative Selling. I read it, thinking I would learn something new. There were some interesting ideas, but fundamentally it reiterated what professional selling is really about (I will write later, more seriously about it). But it […]
The Big Idea: Solve Your Customers’ Big Problems
Customers are looking for something different these days. Our traditional approaches to selling are no longer appropriate. As a friend and colleague, Niall Devitt, states, “Buyers are looking for something new!” Other people are saying the new paradigm is “Provocative Selling.” I’m not certain I buy into more consultant speak about a more advanced form of selling, but I think the underlying idea is interesting. I think the great challenge to sales professionals in helping their customers is to help them solve bigger problems—or even their BIG problems. This requires shaking up how we think and sell, as well as […]