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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
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
This is probably the closest to a “political post” I will ever write. Much of the drive to write this comes from watching/reading the news. I am disgusted by behaviors I see in both parties, by much of the media, and by too many “influencers.” But a lot of this view comes from reading my feeds in LI, observing discussions, participating in some. Some comes from the strictly business focused discussions I see. I understand differing positions, beliefs, POVs. I understand differing objectives, priorities, agendas. I understand, unfortunately, that some of these differences may be irreconcilable. What I can’t understand, […]
Hilarious, Possibly Frightening AI Hallucinations
Long time readers will know that I’ve been leveraging Google NotebookLM for AI generated conversations of my posts. For the most part, they are very good. There are always interesting ideas, observations, and sometimes fascinating twists on the writing. There are some hallucinations, but many that are knowable only to me. Listeners may not even recognize these as hallucinations. But recently, many of my posts have become more analytic and problem solving in nature. Some very directive on “here are the equations and analysis we use.” And in those conversations, I notice the models really struggle. They tend to invent […]
Win Rates 101
There is so much conversation about win rates. But in those conversations, there’s a lot of misunderstanding. What we measure, how we measure it, varies tremendously. Some measure win rate from very first contact. Some measure it from the moment of qualification. Some measure it on a $ basis some on a deal basis. Some attribute measure win rates within live deals, some look at past deals. When we look at win rates, however we measure it, we tend to look at one number. But there are a variety of numbers, and analytics we can get from looking at win […]
Unsmart, Stupid, Willfully Ignorant
I’ve been struggling with a lot of the “stuff” I see in my feeds. And, from time to time, conversations I have. And reflections on the “state of selling/business.” As I’ve been reflecting on it, I’ve asked a couple of close friends/colleagues. Are they seeing similar things? How would they describe it? The descriptions were all over the place. Terms like “Idiots, Such Stupidity, Anti-intellectual…..” I get what they are saying, but they weren’t quite capturing the behaviors I am trying to describe. For the time being, I’ve categorized so many of the behaviors in three ways: For the moment, […]
The Sales Process And Contextual Flexibility
I’ve been doing some work with a brilliant CRO. We’ve been reworking and implementing a revised selling/buying process. Their previous process was poorly defined, outdated, and people weren’t using it. As we are rolling this out, she is encountering resistance from her team: “My situations are all different! This is too rigid! This is too complicated and structured for me, just let me do my own thing! I don’t need no stinkin’ process, f**k off…..” (OK, I made the last one up, but I have encountered a lot of sellers thinking this.) I see the same excuses from too many […]
Doing The Work Or Going Through The Motions?
In the past few days, I’ve heard two fascinating things. At first, they seem very different, but when you think about them, the underlying issues are similar. The first was was a quote from Tom Mendoza on The Learn-It-All podcast, “Nothing great has ever been done by people that don’t want to do it!’ The second was in a conversation with Brent Adamson. He shared the story of a CRO at a SKO. “The secret to your competitive advantage is Mediocrity!” The CRO went on to explain how all their competitors were committed to mediocrity, so all it took to […]