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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
What’s The Customer Business Problem?
My friend, Tim Ohai, made an interesting statement, “Sadly many sales people have no idea how to identify when no customer problem exists.” I think there is a lot of truth to the statement. Perhaps the reality is that too many sales people aren’t even identifying the customer problem–the customer is. There’s some evidence to support this, increasingly, sales people are getting involved later in the customer buying process. Depending on the research you believe, the customer is anywhere between 57-90% through their buying process when they first engage sales people. The customer has already determined they have a problem, […]
The New Value Proposition: Sense Making
As it should, the concept of the value proposition has changed dramatically over decades. When I was taught the concept of a value proposition, back as people were just learning how to shape wheels from stones, it was basically an enhanced version of feature, advantage, benefit (FABs). Over time, the value proposition became a financially justified business proposal, demonstrating the specific improvements the customer should expect from our solutions. These value propositions focused on revenue/profit increases, cost reduction. Some versions would look at quality, productivity, the experience our customer could create for their customer and so on. These principles of […]
Getting By Or Getting Ahead
Most mornings, I feel like Bill Murray in Ground Hog Day. I get up, look at my news feed reading blog posts on sales, sales management, marketing, business management. I spend a few minutes looking at conversations on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other sources. Day after day, month after month, year after year, it’s the same thing. I’ve been actively writing this blog since 2007. Go back to those older posts. You will find that I talked/ranted about the same issues in 2007 that I am currently ranting about. I’m sometimes embarrassed, at the bottom of each of my posts, you […]
Focus On The Customer Need To Buy
The big problem sales people have is their obsessive focus on their need to sell. Every sales person I talk to is obsessed on their targets and goals, “I’ve got to make this many calls; I’ve got to have this many meetings: I’ve got to make this many proposals: I’ve got to close this many deals to make my number…….” If a sales person is behind, the intensity of focus (at least for people who aren’t losers) gets far more intense—sometimes, with added pressure from management, sales people even become panicked. The focus is on selling and meeting that need […]
Learning From “Lazy” Salespeople
“Lazy” sales people are among my favorites–let me qualify that. “Lazy” sales people who always make their goals are among my favorites. “Lazy” sales people, or at least those who seem to accomplish a lot with minimum effort have broken the code. They’ve understood exactly what they need to do to achieve their goals. They don’t waste time on things that don’t achieve their goals. “Lazy” sales people have figured out the things that too many “busy” sales people may not have. They don’t chase bad deals. They don’t engage in wishful thinking. They quickly identify the most critical issues […]
What’s A Full Pipeline/Funnel?
I participated in a fascinating discussion about Disqualification. It was on LinkedIn, led by Steve Hall. Click on the link to look at the comments, it’s pretty interesting. But a part of the discussion was really intriguing and brought out how badly we understand pipeline’s and our numbers. As a result, we drive for the wrong things and fail to produce results. It started with me taking my usual extreme position around Vicious Disqualification. Along with Steve and others, we believe sales people waste too much time chasing the wrong deals. Too many pipelines are filled with garbage–stuff that isn’t […]