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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
Using What You Sell…..
Some years ago, I was responsible for leading sales/marketing for IBM’s manufacturing sector. Those were the years when we were introducing software solutions, not just selling naked hardware. We had invested in developing relationships with key suppliers of engineering design tools, ERP, process control systems, and others. We went to market with a solutions focus, helping manufacturers solve their toughest design and production problems. As we were engaging our customers, a problematic question arose, “IBM is a big design and manufacturing company, what tools are you using to drive design and manufacturing performance?” “Oh Shit!!” That was a question, we […]
Purposefulness And Focus In Selling
Too often, we seem to be wandering, aimlessly, in our understanding of what our jobs, as sellers, are. We have a notion that we are accountable for producing orders that drive revenue, enabling us to achieve our goals. But how we do this is all over the place! To many, too many, it’s only about prospecting. Fill our pipelines with qualified leads, and the numbers will work out–we’ll win some, lose some, but hopefully get enough to achieve our goals. And when we seem to be falling short, we ramp up our efforts. “More,” always seems the solution to every […]
Is The Customer Always Right?
Fred Copestake posed an interesting survey on LinkedIn, “Is The Customer Always Right?” It’s an interesting question, applying not only to customers, but also to each of us. What’s important here, and the biggest challenge, is perception. All of us, customers included, will always think we are right. Reflect, for a moment, why would someone continue to do things they know to be wrong or incorrect? It just doesn’t make sense. With the exception of criminals (of all types), people do not consciously choose to do something they know of as wrong. They choose to do the best thing possible, […]
“Sales Are Math,” Selling Isn’t!
I recently read a LinkedIn post, one of the statements was, “Sales are math.” For a moment I scratched my head, then I realized the author was absolutely correct. The noun form of the word, Sales, is about accounting for a transaction. When I was EVP of Sales, every day I would call my sales ops VP, asking her, “What did we book in sales today?” She would provide the total of POs we had gotten. She might say something like, “Dave, we got 12 POs in the US, totalling $2.75 M, EMEA had 15 @ $2.2M, and APAC had […]
What Is Accountability?
We discuss accountability a lot, but do we really understand what it is, are we agreed on what it is? As I started to write this post, I went to the dictionary. Frankly, it wasn’t helpful. Merriam Webster’s definition was, in fact, more confusing than helpful: Definition of accountability: the quality or state of being accountable. Especially: an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions. Responsibility and accountability may overlap a little, but are different. I prefer the following as a definition of accountability: Ownership of your commitments and doing what you commit to do. […]
“We Live In A World Of Uncertainty……”
“We live in a world of uncertainty, that may not be a flaw, but a feature of our existence.” Tom Morris in Everyday Patriot This quote in Tom’s book captivated me–partly because of it’s significance in the theme of his book, but mostly as a principle or opportunity we might have in business. Everything in our “wiring” in business is to reduce and eliminate uncertainty. We look for things that are perfectly predictable. We are uncomfortable when they aren’t. Our managers don’t want surprises. We strive to “know everything,” as a method to combat or reduce uncertainty. We are uncomfortable […]