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 people–what do I do?  Which strategy should I follow, do I use this approach or another?  It goes on and on……

Too often, however, in response to this complexity and all the “tools” that have been put in place to manage complexity, instead of simplification, we dumb things down.  We make it so we don’t have to think, analyze, question, respond.

We have scripts, very complex scripts, branching to handle any customer situation.  We listen only to know which branch in the script to follow–not to understand the customer.

We have playbooks, guiding us through every twist and turn of the...

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 why he didn’t call my wife) asking our intentions at the end of the lease.  I told him, “She loves the car, she’ll probably buy the current model at the end of her current lease.  Why don’t you ask her?”  He politely asked, “Would you make sure to call me when you want to get the new car?”  I responded we would and we concluded the conversation.

A couple days later, he calls me.  I noticed it was the end of the month.  “We have a great promotion on that model of car right now!  You can get the new model with no penalty……..”  I knew he wanted to make a deal now, I knew he had to make his numbers.  I thanked him for the call, but said that we really didn’t want to replace her...

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 feature comparison of their product to competition, “Our date field is structured this way, which is better than the competitors………”

Too often, particularly with organizations with great, hot, or complex products, our selling is really about the product and nothing else.  We limit ourselves, we frustrate the customers.  As great as our products may be, for the customer it’s not about the product.

We work with lots of organizations whose products have become commodities.  Some of them sell sand—well, it’s silicon for semiconductors.  Others sell basic materials like chemicals.

They face the ultimate selling challenge—how do you differentiate your...

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 Mark’s.

As sales professionals, we think we have to have all the answers.  The customer has a question–we leap to answer, sometimes not really answering the customer’s real question.  We find customers who have problems, we have all the answers—now if only we can get them to buy.

In reality, our customers have very difficult challenges and tough issues.  Answers are not always easy to find.  Being constrained with having to “have the answer” limits us and our ability to create value for the customer.

Being forced to always have the answers limits our ability to engage the...