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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
AI Won’t Make You Excellent, It Will Only Make You More Of What You Already Are
Last week, I published the first of a series of posts, oriented around my upcoming book, “Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough.” It should hit the shelves in mid December. That post focused on “What Is Sales Excellence?” In that article, I asked whether sales excellence is really about results, or about something deeper—mindset and behaviors. The response was fascinating, lots of comments on the post and in email about how so many are so focused on just getting by, being good enough. But when I read my feeds, there seems to be a different story. “But what about AI? Doesn’t […]
Meetings Slowing You Down?
Opened my inbox and was hit with an email titled, “Meetings Slowing You Down?” It was a vendor, offering an alternative to the painful process of sitting across a table from someone and trying to achieve a shared goal. This isn’t new, we use emails, texts, voicemails (I think I remember those), short videos, all sorts of things to broadcast something. It may be a prospecting note, it may be a follow up to something someone sent you, it may be the next step in something you are trying to achieve. But, as this email implies, these meetings tend to […]
It’s Not About The Process……
I talk about the buying and selling process all the time. Everyone knows that you have to have a sales process, some even know it has to align with the customer buying process. Our CRMs come with predefined selling processes. Every training program incorporates some sort of process. But when I work with sellers, even working with leaders, they aren’t using the process. There’s all sorts of rationalizing and excuse making. “This deal is different, I can’t follow the process…..” “Things have changed, our process was developed 10 years ago….” (Some legitimacy to this.). Most of the time, I see […]
“I Don’t Have The Time To Coach!”
Coaching has the highest impact on maximizing sales performance! There’s all sorts of research supporting this statement, I’ve written about it ad nauseam. There’s also the data that shows how little time managers spend coaching, often less than one hour a week—for their entire team. But I continue to hear, “I don’t have the time to coach!” I’ve been hearing this for decades. I’ve been writing about this for decades, the first article I wrote was in 2009, and there have been about 5 subsequent articles with virtually the same topic. And it’s still a huge issue and roadblock to […]
What Does Sales Excellence Really Look Like?
When I’m speaking to groups, I often pose the question, “What does sales excellence really look like?” Without hesitation responses come flooding in, “Hitting the numbers!” “Beating the competitors!” “Winning the big deals!” “Crushing my quota!” “Maxing my comp!” As great as these outcomes seem, they really don’t define sales excellence–or indicate that you are excellent at selling. It might mean that you are just good enough. There’s a good market, you have a great product, you found the right customer with the right sense of urgency, and, perhaps, a little bit of luck. I’ve started calling this, “The Good […]
Losing Our Entry Level Jobs!!!
We are inundated with news of layoffs and reductions that, somehow, are attributed to AI. We see predictions of the loss of entry level jobs. In selling, for example, many SDR/BDR jobs will disappear. In marketing, many content/demand gen jobs will disappear. In customer service many of those jobs will disappear. Alarm bells are ringing, accompanied by massive hand wringing! Some suggest we need to slow down our investments in AI to protect those entry level jobs. Some are just shrugging their shoulders, saying “Shit happens…..” Some are saying, “Where do we build the skills for the more senior level […]