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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
Why Do We Invest So Heavily In Losing?
Yes, we are almost at 2025 year-end. I suspect many are rushing to close those last few deals, hopefully making the number. But as we start looking at the New Year, I wanted to pose a question, something to think about as you start looking to the New Year and chasing a new set of numbers. Here it is, “Why do we invest so heavily in losing?” Your reaction is probably, “Dave, you are crazy, we are investing money to win and grow our business, how can you possibly say we are investing in losing?” I see budgets for the […]
Walking The Talk, Why I Refused To Settle…
It is easy to write about high performance; it is much harder to live it when things go wrong. I set a hard commitment to publish my new book. Is “Good Enough” Good Enough, this past Wednesday. But as the date approached, I realized I was staring at a 250-page unformatted manuscript and I was essentially out of time. The company I had hired to do this work had failed miserably. And perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention early in the project to see the troubling signs. But I was stuck and the clock was ticking. It would have been […]
“A Tale Of Two Sellers…”
Recently, I did a deep dive into the performance of two sellers at one of my clients. The client and I wanted to understand exactly what drove the performance differences between them. On the surface, they looked identical. They had similar backgrounds and experience levels. Their territories were nearly the same, mostly focused on new accounts. They had been through the same training, used the same tools, and worked under the same compensation plan. They even had the same manager, who did a decent job of coaching them both. But their results were profoundly different. One seller consistently beat her […]
I Can Tell You The Quality Of A Sales Organization Just By……
My good friend, Keenan, started a fascinating conversation on LinkedIn. His post was a simple picture. I made a comment, “Keenan, I’ll see you and raise you, I can tell the quality of the organization by sitting in on one team pipeline or forecast review 😁” Mark Hunter added, “David Brock Drop the mic and I agree with you David 100%….and we can tell the culture of the organization by listening to how management responds.” Alice Heiman added, “David Brock I’ll see you and raise you (I don’t play cards and I have no idea what I’m talking about on […]
The One Thing That Matters Most
Not long ago, I was speaking to a group of executives. Someone asked, “What is the single skill you look for in hiring a seller?” I suspect they were thinking that I’d respond with something like, prospecting, closing, managing deals, building pipeline, relationship building, or any number of other important skills. My response surprised them, “Curiosity is the single most important skill, not only for sellers but for sales leaders.” When you look at any of those other skills, underneath all of them is some aspect of curiosity. “Which prospects deserve the most investment of my time?” “How can I […]
Why I Advised A Seller To Recommend Her Competitor
Yesterday, I had a fascinating conversation with an outstanding salesperson. She wanted to brainstorm her approach to a negotiation that had hit a wall. It was a multimillion-dollar contract renewal. The client had been a loyal customer for years, but now they were pressuring her for massive price decreases. I asked, “What is their rationale for the decrease?” She replied, “I don’t know. They think that because they are a large customer, they deserve an adjustment. But what they want is crazy! Their consumption of our product is skyrocketing, but they are being irrational.” As we continued, she said, “They […]