Dave Brock
Chatting With CHATGPT On Selling…..
I’ve been fascinated to read about the experiments people are doing with CHATGPT. It’s a fascinating tool, offering some potentially fascinating potential. At the same time, as so many others have discussed, using CHATGPT is a double edged sword; there are some very powerful applications,…
When Our Business Models Break……
Everyday, I have conversations with a wide variety of people, whether senior corporate executives, sales/marketing leaders, sales enablement/sales ops, front line sales managers, sellers, marketers. While the conversations are different, there is an underlying theme common to them all. “Our business models are breaking, they…
Moving Beyond Insight…..
We know insight is critical in engaging our customers, helping them think about their businesses differently. Our ability to discuss relevant insights can be very powerful in inciting customers to think differently, helping them commit to and manage change, helping them in their buying process.…
On Sequences And “Touches”
The research tells us we need to be persistent in our outreaches to prospects and clients. To reach and engage them, we have to leverage multiple channels of engagement. Phone, email, social, texts, and other channels must be leveraged simultaneously to provoke a prospect–even a…
The Problem With Inbound
We rely too much on Inbound leads to achieve our goals! Our prospecting strategies are dominated by creating Inbound demand that sellers respond to. Whether it’s emails, social visibility, SEO, or anything else, the focus is on getting buyers to take the initiative to reach…
Can You “Connect The Dots” With Your Customer?
Every function, every job in an organization is somehow connected with their organization’s strategies, goals, and objectives. Every organization has goals—revenue, earnings, growth, market penetration, geographic penetration, product/offering growth, how they are perceived by customers, how they are perceived in their communities, expansion, competitive positioning,…
What If Buyers Were Better Buyers?
Buyers struggle doing their “jobs” ……buying! We poor sellers struggle, if it weren’t for these inept buyers, selling would be so much easier. Just reflect for a moment. We know 60% of committed buying processes end in no decision made. For those that make a…
Onboarding New Managers
We spend lots of time and money focusing on onboarding new sellers. We provide training, tools, content to reduce their ramp time. Managers spend time helping them become productive. Ironically, we provide very little in the way of onboarding new managers, particularly new front line…
Coaching In The Middle….
Every few years, we revisit the concept of, “Who do we coach?” I’m starting to see a series of articles re-arguing that managers get the greatest return on their coaching time by “coaching in the middle.” The argument being, when we look at sales performance,…
Are We Creating The Value Our Customers Value?
Selling is about creating value…. Well, yeah, … but we have differing views of value, which often focuses on us and not the value customers need…. To most sellers, it’s fitting the customer’s budget and winning because we might have a few more features than…
On Performance Planning…..
Performance planning is one of the most powerful tools for managers and their people. Yet, too often, I don’t see organizations fully exploit the power of performance plans and the performance planning/management process. Too often, we view this process as “something HR makes us do.”…
Is There A Selling Career Path?
Recently, I had a fascinating conversation with a client. We talked about something I rarely hear managers discussing, and something I don’t see pundits commenting on. The topic was, “What kind of career path options do we want to develop for our people? How do…
I Don’t Care How Many Calls You Make Or Emails You Send!
I read an article about the key productivity metrics managers are tracking. According to the survey of over 1000 sales managers, the five most popular metrics were: CRM utilization, Calls made,Emails sent, Conversations, Use of sales tools. I was left scratching my head, thinking, “WTF??????”…
Who’s Our Ideal Customer?
I’ve taken a break from my series “Things We Thought We Knew About Selling But Really Didn’t.” Restarting it, I want to talk about our Ideal Customers–or our ICP (Ideal Customer Profile.) We toss the term around casually, but when I look at too many…
“It’s The Way We Put It Together, That Sets Us Apart”
Too often, when we look at high performance organizations or sellers, we tend to focus on one or two things they do, attributing those their success. “High performers leverage technology…..”“High performers are better prospectors….”“They create much superior value…”“They have consistently better pipelines….”“They leverage social platforms….”……and…
SDRs And AEs, Do We Have Things Backwards?
I’ve always had a contrarian opinion about the roles of SDRs and AEs. While these roles can be very important, often, I think we have our ideas about these roles backwards. As a result, we set both up for failure. First, let me focus the…
Do Your Sellers Know How To Converse With Your Customers?
I spend a lot of time in non-English speaking countries. My French and German are, barely passable. Sometimes, I struggle a little in Ireland, Australia, and the UK (Yes, they are non-English American speaking countries 😉 I spend a lot of time in the Nordics…
Oh No! It’s A RFP?!?
I recognize that I’m jumping around in my continued series on “Things we thought we understood about selling, but really don’t.” Today’s topic is RFPs. Normally, I do everything I can to ignore these, but in talking to clients, I realize how misunderstood these are,…
The Selling Process–Yep, That Again
Continuing my series of posts on the things we thought we understood about selling but really don’t, I’m tackling the selling process. I can already hear the groans and suspect many of you are about to click, moving onto something else. But hang in there,…
Discovery, It Isn’t All About Us
Continuing my series on selling skills we thought we knew but really don’t understand, I’m want to focus on Discovery. It’s a natural follow on to qualifying–actually it’s a complement, qualifying and discovery go hand in hand. Some misunderstanding we have about discovery. We tend…