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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
“I’d Love To Learn More About Your Business….”
Daily, I get inundated with emails, texts, social media messages: “I’d love to learn more about your business and hiring needs….”“Let me know how I can help you…”“Can we collaborate in some way? We provide…….”“How are things going for you?” (WTF!)“How has business been for you during Covid? Are you staying busy?”“Who schedules your calls?”“I’m wondering if you need….”“Are you interested in…..Book a meeting with me….”“Can you share your challenges and priorities? You can schedule a meeting with me on ….”“Are you looking for wins…..” (I responded that our win rate was far too high and I was actually looking […]
Rethinking The Sales Process
Preface: It’s always dangerous to preface an article with a warning. This is a long article. In some ways, I’m writing it to help clarify my own thinking. We are seeing a profound shift in buying, with customers preferring digital engagement channels to sales engagement. I am beginning to explore what this means for our overall engagement strategies, moving from a sales led, digitally supported to a digitally led, sales supported process. For those of you who make it through this, I’d love your feedback and ideas. This will become increasingly important for all of us in the coming years. […]
The Problem With “What Is Being Said”
Yesterday, I was in a fascinating discussion and I made a huge mistake. I responded, too quickly, to what the other person said. Inadvertently, it created huge tension in the discussion and was off-putting to the person I was talking to. While I was well intended, my sloppy response, created a bit of a set back. Fortunately, through the patience of the person I was speaking with, we were able to get our conversation back on track. We do this all the time, too often out of carelessness, sloppiness, or just poor listening skills. We respond to what is said, […]
On Change, Tension, Conflict…..
Might as well get this “ugly” topic out in the open for discussion. It’s amazing that we seldom talk about them, explicitly, or that we try to “mask” them through all sorts of manipulation, or that we try to avoid them. But topics like tension, change, conflict, persuasion, convincing are natural elements of business and selling. Yet there is so much negativity attached to these words. But when we talk about change, within our organizations and with our customers, we are talking about new ideas, opportunities, and different approaches. The nature of exploring these will always involve differing opinions, points […]
Outsourcing “Coaching”
Coaching is one of the highest leverage activities a manager must engage in to maximize the performance of each person on the team. Sadly, too many managers don’t take the time to coach or, when they do, they are very bad at coaching. “Outsourced” coaching is rising in popularity–for many good reasons and too many bad reasons. In my own career, my managers have taken strong roles in coaching, and I have had a few “outsourced” coaches to complement what they do. And, as part of our business, we do a huge amount of “outsourced” coaching. I’ve gotten huge value […]
Start With Why, Then Ask Why Again, Then…
No I’m no channeling my inner Simon Sinek. But “Why” is a fundamental question we too seldom challenge ourselves with. The concept of the “5 Why’s” appears to have originated in in the 1950’s-60’s with Sakichi Toyoda as a cornerstone of the Toyota Production System. It is a fundamental problem solving/diagnostic tool, focused on helping us understand root causes. Why is this important? We have a tendency to react to and act on symptoms of issues we face–within our organizations. Our customers do this, we do this as we look at performance issues in sales and our businesses. We see, […]