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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
Everyone Has A Customer
We struggle to be “customer focused.” Somehow, our priorities and goals have precedence over understanding and helping our customers. At the same time, we know the most effective/efficient path to achieving our goals is through our customers, creating great value with them. But what if everything we do, in every part of our organizations focused on serving the customer. How would that change our engagement strategies? How would it change everything each person in our organizations do? Some would scratch their heads, saying, “We get it, our companies have customers. But it’s the job of sales, marketing, and customer service […]
Are You Curious?
Curiosity is the single skill that transforms everything we do. Sadly, too few talk about curiosity–in fact we seem to be incurious. Imagine just about any job in sales, marketing, customer experience (or any job) and how the curious approach those roles. Imagine curiosity as a key management/leadership attribute, how would this change the way we coach, develop, and lead our people. The curious salesperson will engage the customer with questions. Their curiosity will compel them to learn about the customer, what they are trying to achieve, what stands in the way of their goals, why they do the things […]
Are We Numbed By Work?
I watched a fascinating short film, “Work, I Think It Numbs You, Somehow.” It got me reflecting on much of what I see when working with executives and sales people. Add onto that, all the we read about the Great Resignation. About two minutes into the film, a factory worker is interviewed. He talks about how so much of work causes you to stop thinking, we go through the motions and don’t have to make decisions. The most startling thing was his statement about how that carries over when we leave work, we tend not to force ourselves to think, […]
“Who Do You Work For?”
My friend Rene Voorhorst and I were having one of our periodic conversations. He’s been leading his team through a remarkable journey. We were talking about an initiative focused on deepening the strategic insights and value with their major customers. He relayed a story from one of his people. This salesperson was in a meeting with a customer, they were talking about a business strategy the customer was looking to implement. The salesperson was contributing his ideas about the key issues, risks, alternatives the customer might consider. At the end of the meeting, one of the customers came up to […]
Our “Success” Blinds Us To Our Underperformance!
Not long ago, I was speaking with the executive team of a fairly large company. A frustrated CRO had invited me to help, he was struggling to drive some major changes in their go to customer strategies but wasn’t getting executive support. As timing would have it, the meeting was scheduled a few days after they had announced record growth, both in comparing YoY performance and current year growth. It was a $ Multi-Billion organization. The executive team was, rightfully, proud of their performance. The CEO set the tone at the outset, “Why should we be meeting, didn’t you see […]
Salespeople, The Help You Are Giving Your Customers Isn’t Very Helpful!
Hopefully, most sales people recognize they create more value when they are being helpful to the customer. Just focusing on getting the order isn’t very helpful, we need to move past that. But do we really understand the help our customers need, and are we providing that help? It seems the help too many organizations think the help customers need is focusing on telling our customers about our companies and our products. They think it’s helpful to share “corporate glamour charts,” focusing on how impressive their companies are. These organizations and salespeople think the process of handing customers from one […]