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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
The Cost Of Not Developing Judgment
In my last post, I focused on Judgment, what it is, the development cycle. But one could just say, “Yeah Dave, I get it, but so what……?” The “so what” is the cost of not developing our judgment. But it doesn’t stop at our own judgment. There are costs at the team and organizational level. They ripple through to our inability to achieve our goals. Finally, and perhaps the biggest costs accrue to our customers. But before I get into this, I have to lay the groundwork. In the previous article I said we are always exercising judgment. It can […]
Judgment Starts Where The Analysis Runs Out
Over the past months, I’ve been obsessed with writing about judgment. Whether it is what AI leaves to humans. Or that leaders exercise in developing their teams. Or the judgment an individual exercises in the moment of engagement with a customer. Judgment is the differentiator in how we get things done when uncertainty and risk exists. After all these posts, I realized I’ve talked about the word but never spent any time talking about what judgement is. First, I did something unusual, I went to the dictionaries: · Cambridge Dictionary: the ability to make decisions or to make good decisions, […]
The Answers Are Easy, The Best Answers Are Tough, Implementing Them Is The Real Work
My feed is filled with answers. Gurus and experts constantly say, “Do this and solve your performance problems in the next quarter!” One, constantly posts, “I can redesign [X] role in 30 days.” These are often followed by prompts for AI to develop and tune the answers. I suspect this individual has never held many of the roles he expertly redesigns. Most of the time, my reaction is, “Why is it taking you so long?” After decades of doing this, I can walk into an organization, and within about a week, I have an idea of the biggest issues, and […]
Sales Leaders, Moving Out Of the Control Room
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been setting up and defining what I think is the single most important challenge facing sales organization. I started with a discussion around our obsession and abuse of metrics in, If It Can’t Be Measured, It Can’t Be Managed, I went on to discuss The Death Of Sales Management! At its core is understanding business beyond the dashboards and being able to exercise judgment beyond the data. In understanding the business, I’ve stolen Peters/Waterman’s MBWA, using the concept of Leadership by Walking Around. The shorthand is the “walkabout.” (Thanks to my Aussie friends.) […]
The Death Of Sales Management
It must seem strange to see the author of The Sales Manager Survival Guide writing about the death of sales management. Clearly, something is off. Even worse, I’m cheering this on! Before you burn your copies of the book or take any other rash actions, let me explain myself. The job of the sales manager has devolved over the past ten years. It’s now become largely an administrative and reporting function. It’s also taken on a super seller function, with managers injecting themselves into deals to negotiate and go for the win. How has this come about? Over the past […]
“If It Can’t Be Measured, It Can’t Be Managed!”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this again. Perhaps for the 100 thousandth time. I had been sitting in a meeting with a pretty powerful team. The CFO had invited himself to the meeting to start understanding things and “getting things straight.” As he talked about what his concerns, he paused for a moment. Then those words came out of his mouth, “If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed!” You can guess where the rest of the conversation devolved to. I hear it so often, whether delivered by a CFO, CEO, CRO, Rev-Ops, CMO, or a Sales Manager. […]
