Posted Thu at 11:36 PM by Dave Brock

It’s human nature to categorize things and people.  It enables us to build models and constructs.  It enables us to more easily deal with ambiguity, abstractions, and other things.  Somehow things seem easier and clearer when everything has a box and everything is in its box. W...

Posted Wed at 11:20 PM by Dave Brock

This morning, I’m sitting in a series of presentations extolling the value of big data.  I get it–kind of.  I get that more data has been created in the past 2 years than in the history of mankind.  I get that data is everywhere, we can know so much about so many diff...

Posted Wed at 12:22 AM by Dave Brock

Over the next several months, I’ll be interviewing a number of Sales Operations and Sales Enablement executives.  I believe these roles are critical in understanding and driving sales performance. Field sales managers focus on their teams.  They want to maximize the performance of e...

Posted Mon at 11:06 PM by Dave Brock

I’m a great advocate of Radical Simplification.  Our worlds are too complex, we seem to keep piling things onto everything we’ve done in the past.   New programs, new processes, new systems, new tools, new training.  Layer upon layer accumulates, confusing sales peopl...

Posted May 17 by Dan Waldschmidt

Sometimes everybody around you is wrong.  Frightfully, horrifically mistaken.  That’s important to remember. One of the things business experts tell you when you are considering changes to your sales strategy is the idea that you need to “listen to your marketpl...

Posted May 16 by Dave Brock

I’ve been having trouble with a sales person.  He’s someone I’ve done business with a few times before.  It started a few months ago. He sold my wife her last car.  He knows her lease is coming to an end in July.  A few months ago, he politely called me (wonder...

Posted May 14 by Dave Brock

As much as sales people try to sell solutions or sell value, too often they fall back on great products.  They focus on product, features, functions, feeds and speeds.  Recently, I saw a “sales playbook” from an enterprise software company.  It was 121 pages, of feature by...

Posted May 13 by Dave Brock

on May 13th, 2013 <!--end post header--> We all have them, Questions We’re Afraid To Ask.  They’re obvious, but we’re afraid to ask them.  Will we offend the customer?  Will they make us look stupid?  Are we afraid of the answer we might get? Not as...

Posted May 11 by Dan Waldschmidt

Knowing more doesn’t make you more. Let’s face it, your obsession with learning every new sales tactic isn’t getting you that far. If you are like just about everyone else in business, it’s something you’ve been thinking about for some time now. You are frustrated, a...

Posted May 10 by Dave Brock

Today, I read probably the most impactful posts I’ve read in months.  It’s entitled Stumped, by Mark McCarthy.  It’s simply brilliant, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not reading it.   I won’t do it justice, but I wanted to add my thoughts to M...

Posted May 8 by Dave Brock

Buying has changed.  The traditional role of the sales person in “teaching” the customer about solutions and products is much less important.  Buyers are self educating on the web.  Depending on which research you read, as much as 70% of the buying process is completed bef...

Posted May 7 by Dave Brock

A few years ago, a client called me very frustrated.  He was the CEO of a large company, he’d been traveling in the field, visiting customers and sales people.  He told me of a ride-along with a sales person in Boston.  Proudly, the sales person was talking about a large system ...

Posted May 6 by Dave Brock

If anyone has doubts about how much professional selling is changing, download and read Mike Schultz and John Doerr’s report, What Sales Winners Do Differently.  Mike and John were curious about the buyer’s perspective.  They interviewed hundreds of buyers to see what the winni...

Posted May 5 by Dan Waldschmidt

Remember the last time you were really afraid? Maybe it was a health scare the last time you visited the doctor.  Or a job scare when your boss looked at you and said “you need to turn things around right now”. All of a sudden your heart starts beating faster. Your hands fe...

Posted May 1 by Dave Brock

My post, “But Your Price Is Too High” has generated well over 100 comments between here, LinkedIn and a few other sites.  The discussion has been very intense, with lots of great ideas and some challenges.  But, I still am finding some confusion. Our companies have methodologi...

Posted April 30 by Dave Brock

I hear it all the time, “I need an excuse to get back into the customer.  Let me get them that case study, that reference, that white paper, anything that allows me to meet with them one more time.”  Creating excuses to get back into the customer is nothing but old sales mythol...

Posted April 29 by Dave Brock

We know the importance of selling internally.   We get support, resources, and commitments to help us close deals with our customers.  We get the programs and products we need to better penetrate our territories.  Selling internally is critical to our success and ability to accom...

Posted April 28 by Dan Waldschmidt

Sometimes business gets broken. You feel like you used to be headed in the right direction.  For a while you were getting the results that you wanted. But now,  you’re confused by what you see. You aren’t sure what’s wrong and you’re not happy with where you’...

Posted April 26 by Dave Brock

I do deal reviews with sales people every week.  Too often, I hear the same thing, “The customer is busy right now, they’ve asked me to call back in 30 days.”  30 days becomes 60, 60 becomes 90…… We keep those deals in our funnels.  We won’t let ...

Posted April 25 by Dave Brock

There’s a great article in the Harvard Business Review, “Figure It Out.”    Be sure to get a copy of it. The ability to “Figure Things Out,” is critical for sales and business success.  But it seems we overlook it, or try to “engineer” all ou...