Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Mechanics Over Meaning
For over a decade, too much of the focus in selling has been on the mechanics of the buyer-seller interaction. All efforts have been focused on the mechanics of the tasks sellers do, and to a much lesser degree, the mechanics of tasks buyers do. Tools and technology, focused on efficiency has enabled sellers to execute far more tasks than in the past. Sellers now send thousands of emails, make 100s of dials, efficiently scroll through social feeds with likes and the occasional “DM me.” And something has been lost in those efforts—-but you already know that, so I won’t […]
What Is Coaching?
We know coaching is important–sadly we invest too little time in high impact coaching. Spending 30-60 minutes a week, per person is hardly adequate. But this article is not about the time we spend in coaching. I find people confused about what coaching is. The examples we see of coaching, the tools people leverage in their coaching don’t seem to capture the heart of what coaching is. Is coaching call intelligence and helping someone understand and analyze their calls, or whispering into their ears during a call? Is coaching role plays, helping people practice and execute better? Is coaching reviewing […]
Prompts Won’t Save You! The Thinking Underlying The Prompt Will….
AI is embedded into virtually everything I do, every day. Two windows are always open on my computer. One for Claude, one for ChatGPT (I’m experimenting with others). As I mull over issues, questions, ideas, these tools are critical thought partners. When I want a different point of view, I often turn to the LLMs to help me. Over time, I’ve developed a rich library of prompts I use to help me look at new things. I store some of these as GPTs. My prompts, frequently reach the 8000 character limits of these GPTs. My prompts are focused on helping […]
Our Models Limit Us, Dangerously
We build all sorts of models to help us understand our customers, markets, competition. We look at changes, disruptions, building them into our models. They help us simplify and focus our efforts and initiatives. They provide a framework each of us understands, enabling our teams to maximize performance. Eventually, they provide the operating framework guiding our strategies and execution. Models are very powerful and critical to our success. At the same time, our models limit us and our thinking. Often dangerously. We tend to view everything in the world in the context of our models. And when they don’t fit, […]
The Quiet Power Of Knowing Who You Are
The first Saturday every month, Ned, Jack, Tom and I jump on a Zoom call. They are roughly 60 minutes, generally run a few minutes longer. No agenda, we tend to wander around 3-5 topics. We started congratulating Jack on his new grandchild. We moved on to congratulate Tom on appearing on the Chris Voss podcast. It was a fascinating, deft tug of war. Tom was invited to talking about the Stoics and Stoicism. Somehow, Chris kept tugging stoicism into the manosphere, associating being Stoic with toughness, confidence, chest beating. Gently, Tom wouldn’t acknowledge that, but would find a thread […]
“14% Of Our Sellers Drive 80% Of Revenue!”
“14% of sellers drive 80% of revenue!” This, and similar data points, are showing up in my feeds, with various experts commenting on what it means, then offering insights and solutions to address. While I have a lot of questions about this data and would like to get under the numbers to better understand, I’m always amused by the insights and recommendations provided by the experts. It seems this data point has become an inviolable law of nature. It’s there with other “laws of nature,” things like: The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, what […]