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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
“I Feel Like I’m Being A Pest!”
As I talk to sales people, I’m hearing this frustration being expressed more and more, “I feel like I’m being a pest…” Usually, it’s the result of people being required to complete a series of cadences–email, phone, text, whatever. They are measured by the touches, probably because research says we have to reach out at least 14 times. Often, these comments are about the very first prospecting outreach. I, also, hear this on qualified deals–particularly near the end of the quarter as sales people are pressured to book orders. It’s easy to see how they feel that way. Likewise, it’s […]
We’re All Flawed….
I was struck by a comment presidential historian Michael Beschloss made about General Colin Powell. “He was a flawed, great man…” What a wonderful commentary about a great leader! As I reflected, it seems to me this is a characteristic of great leaders–the ability to recognize they are flawed, but the commitment to overcome or correct these flaws. General Powell made some tragic errors of judgement, but what made him a great man was the owned up to them and worked incessantly to overcome or correct them. None of us is perfect, though too often too many believe we are. […]
The Customer Is NOT Always Right!
For decades, there’s the image of the “customer is always right.” Sales people have been deferential to the customer, not wanting to seem disagreeable or contentious. Somehow, there’s a feeling that if we disagree with the customer, we become “unlikeable,” scaring the customer away. We’ve invested millions in techniques for handling customer objections and disagreements. We talk about things like the “soft sell.” All of this misses key issues around any change initiative—there will be differing points of view, there will be disagreements, there will be misunderstanding. As sales people, we are helping the customer to change, we are helping […]
The Great Reinvention!
There’s a lot of talk about the Great Resignation. Partly, a result of the changes in work resulting from pandemic, partly things that have been building in people’s attitudes toward work since years before the pandemic. We’ve seen the precursors to the Great Resignation for some time. Sharply declining employee engagement and satisfaction, systemic reductions in performance, higher levels of voluntary attrition and sharply lowering tenures. As leaders, we’ve created much of the problem ourselves. There has been the great Commoditization Of Talent–treating people as widgets that can be easily replaced by another widget. Doing everything we can to mechanize […]
The Ossification Of Selling
I just completed a post on the “Ossification Of Selling.” It was finished, I was literally hovering my mouse over the “Publish” button, then stopped. With my mouse hovering over the Publish button, I realized I’ve written about this dozens, perhaps hundreds of times over the past years. Each post has had a slightly different approach, perhaps different examples. These posts generate lots of conversations in social channels, they generate lot’s of likes and sharing. But this whining isn’t contributing to changing how we sell and how we engage our customers. It’s just piling on to all the things we […]
Tired Selling Advice
Even “sales gurus” get it wrong. I was reading an article entitled “15 Rules Of Selling,” Some observations about these rules: The word, “Customer,” was never mentioned. These rules are all about us–the sellers. Yet buying is always about customers. The rule that came closer to mentioning customers referred to buyers. It was”Buyers are liars.” I just can’t begin to address this. It’s stunning to come out of the mouth of an expert. This mindset pervades too many and is the basis of distrust that buyers feel for sellers. “Closing begins at the beginning,” is a variant of the infamous, […]