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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 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. […]
A New Game Show, “Seller’s Jeopardy”
I was at a party recently, for some reason people started talking about TV Game Shows. They started talking about Jeopardy, particularly the Alex Trebek days. I’ve never been a big game show person, to tell you how off target I was, as they were talking about Alex’s hosting, I kept thinking, “Well what about Vanna White, she was a big part of the show?” As the conversation went on, my mind went to strange places. I started imagining the game of “Seller’s Jeopardy.” Perhaps a competition customers could conduct. Instead of answers, the board would reveal questions. Questions would […]
What Do Chefs And Great Food Have To Do With B2B?
I used to think fine dining meant which dipping sauce I chose for my French fries. Then I met my wife. Kookie had an amazing palate and talent with food. First, she introduced me to NYC restaurants like Le Bernardin, Lutèce, Le Cirque, and later, Chez Panisse in Berkeley. She had gotten to know many of the Chefs, so often, we’d get the last table of the evening, then spend time drinking and talking food with the Chefs. To me, it was a foreign language. Later, she left a great career in technology sales/leadership and enrolled in the CIA (Culinary […]
