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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
“A Seat At The Table….”
Over the past 6-7 years, increasingly, I’ve seen too many discussions about “getting a seat at the table.” Usually, they refer to reporting directly to the CEO. The arguments have come from sales enablement, sales ops, marketing, customer experience, the receptionist at the front desk. OK, I made the last one up, receptionists serve a very important function. They are often the first experience customers, suppliers, the community have of an organization. Because of that importance, perhaps they, too, should get a seat at the table. The table is getting pretty crowded! I have to confess, these discussions seem so […]
“Why Does This Happen?”
The question, “Why Does This Happen,” and its variants (“What causes this to occur, How does this happen, etc?”) are some of the most profound questions we can pose as we look at understanding problems and opportunities. As we start posing these questions, the responses provoke us to follow up with the “What if….., Have you considered…., How might things change if…..? All of these are foundational in engaging our customers to think differently. They are critical as we look at our own strategies and performance. But too often, we fail to do this. Instead of trying to understand how/why […]
Shifting From “I Have To…” To “I Get Too…”
Recently, I was having a conversation with an outstanding sales leader and friend, Robyn Wiseman. Periodically, we get together to exchange ideas. These conversations follow a familiar format; we talk a little about her team and what they are doing, sometimes there’s a little coaching, but mostly it’s recognition of the great job they are doing. What’s fascinating about Robyn and her team is they focus on basic, disciplined execution. No tricks, just focus on the fundamentals and creating value based conversations with prospects and customers. Then our conversation shifts to exploring other topics. In this conversation, I wanted to […]
Lead Follow-up Malpractice
Everyone struggles to generate leads. We struggle to provoke interest, to engage a prospect, to get people to respond to our outreach. The data on responses is, not surprisingly, horrible. We are “happy,” with response rates in fractions of percentage, we know we can generate volume just by doing more. Our abilities to generate leads are bleak. But what astounds me is how poorly we manage those leads we get. Too often, our response to a lead is completely inappropriate, as a result, we lose any possibility to generate a conversation, to nurture and develop a lead. Here’s an example, […]
We Must Take A First Step!
Yesterday, we were shocked to hear about yet another shooting. This time, at an elementary school in Texas. As of this morning, 19 children and 2 teachers were murdered! On a weekly basis, we hear of continued violence, murders. Whether it’s Black citizens shopping in a grocery store, Asians in a church, individuals on a subway train. And after each event, we hear our leaders offering condolences, saying the same thing, preening for the press. Some call for various forms of gun control. Some argue for different solutions, better approaches to mental health, better approaches to predicting and avoiding violent […]
Finding The “Music” Between The Notes…..
Some years ago, my father was mentoring a young man. My father was in his late 80s, the young man was in his late 20s and autistic. Both shared a passion for music. One day, my dad invited me to visit the young man, let me call him Robert. Robert lived in a special home, when we arrived he was sitting at the piano. He was playing some of the works of Schoenberg. The pieces were very complex, Robert’s playing was beautiful. I wasn’t smart enough to recognize the talent it took for Robert to play this music, I recognized […]