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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
Coaching Confusion
This is a good news/bad news post. For years, there has been little attention paid to the topic of coaching. Sure, there was lip service, but when one looked deeply into organizations, either coaching wasn’t done, or the coaching that was done was horrible. In the past year, there has been increasing attention to coaching–at least when measured by social media articles, and, possibly, VC investments. Despite the increasing attention, there is even more confusion, and, I’m not sure how much of this attention is actually translating into high impact performance based coaching. I number of ancillary indicators would indicate […]
The Prospecting Presentation….
I was recently asked to review the “first meeting” presentation for a large technology organization. As a disclaimer, this organization’s presentation was no different than 100’s of these that I’ve seen from other organizations, or pitches that have been inflicted on me in first meetings with potential vendors. But, it’s interesting to look at this as an example of how we “connect” with customers. Some observations: This presentation was intended for initial meetings with prospective customers. As an aside, I have a basic aversion to any PowerPoint presentation in a first meeting. It seems to me the meeting should be […]
On Time Management, A Non-Traditional View
Time management is, more than ever, an issue for each of us. While so many of us have been working from home, our travel and F2F meetings have been restricted, somehow it seems our challenges with managing time has become a much bigger challenge. We can understand this, in the last two years, it’s been difficult to separate our work and personal lives. They are, literally, intertwined. We spend our days in a few rooms, with our families restricted to the same rooms, moving from task to task. Just the mindless task of grabbing a cup of coffee and having […]
On Measures, Metrics, KPIs
In selling (marketing, sales, customer experience) and business, in general, data, measures, metrics, and KPIs are important, and, sometimes, helpful. It’s become fashionable to quote, Goodhart’s Law, which states, “When a measure becomes a target, it seems to become a good measure.” Well……, Yes……, but what does that mean? When you think about it, Goodhart’s statement is less about measures and more about human behavior. Let’s start at the beginning. A measure is simply that. It’s a number or indicator of some sort. For example, a measure may be “I made 50 calls…” or “I sent 100 emails …..” or […]
The Tyranny Of “More!”
Sellers tend to be selfish and greedy. They keep asking for “More!” The need for more pretty much permeates everything sellers and managers do. More pretty much runs the gamut of topics—more leads, more opportunities, more scripts, more content, more support, more tools, more deals, more pipeline, more calls, more meetings, more proposals, more discounts. more product to sell, more territory, more pipeline, more commission, more people, more funding, more, more, more…. And the response to these request is, generally, to provide more. Though more seldom equates to better, and, in my experience, is never the right starting point for […]
Selling And Great Cooking
The other day, I read a great post from David Masover, comparing sales with great cooking. It’s really an outstanding analogy and way to think about selling. I’ve been fortunate to hang around some of the best professional chefs. My wife, after a career in technology sales, decided to pursue her dream. She attended the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to learn–even though she was already an outstanding cook. It was a rigorous 3 year program. After graduating, she did a number of things–cooking for private dinners, some catering, some events. Eventually, she fell into teaching. She wanted to help […]