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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
Person Or Personality?
One of my favorite writers is John McPhee. Recently, I was rereading a short story, A Philosopher In The Kitchen. It’s outstanding, both as a masterpiece in writing and in the ideas he conveys. While it’s about a chef, it provokes thinking about the highest levels of practice in any profession. One of the lines that struck me, “He would like to be known for what he does, but in this time, in this country, his position is awkward, for he prefers being a person to becoming a personality…” Today, we seem to live in a world where people aspire […]
Hanging Out With People Different From Me
It’s human nature to hang out people like us. Perhaps the people we are grow up with, perhaps those we went to school with. We tend to gravitate to people like us. Maybe it’s the shared experiences and backgrounds. Maybe it’s the comfort factor, the camaraderie. It shapes every part of our lives. Where we live, our friendships, where we work. We tend to hire people who look like us, who have similar backgrounds and experiences. We see things similarly, we have similar instincts and reactions. We learn, but we focus on learning the same things. We change, but we […]
“Seek first to understand…..
One of the most important things a sales person can do with her customer is to “understand.” One of the most important things great leaders do is to try to “understand.” Instead, we tend to focus, selfishly, on being “understood.” That is, focusing on our own priorities, self interests, agendas and what we seek to achieve. Dr. Stephen Covey’s fifth habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” is a fundamental principle of selling and leadership, yet it is rare that I see this principle exercised. Until we understand our customers–individually and organizationally, we have no context in which […]
Do The Work!
I have to confess some exhaustion. Pundits and experts in social media, each promoting their own brand of miracle cure or short cut to success. “Do these 3 things and make your numbers!,” “With this tool/service, you will be overwhelmed with leads.” Likewise, I’m exhausted looking at organizations implementing their favorite “program du jour.” Whether it’s a new approach to engaging customers, a new tool or technique they read about in social media, or some other bright shiny object. They are excited about it for about a day, it becomes the core to their success, until the next day, when […]
It’s Not The Lack Of Information That Stops Us….
We live in a world with an abundance of information. One might, fairly, claim we are drowning in information/data. This is profoundly different from what we faced 5, 10, 15, or more years ago, when information availability was far more restricted. Back in the “old days,” finding high quality information, relevant to what we needed was very difficult. But today, the challenge is the opposite, we have too much good quality information. One would think, with this abundance would make things easier. We should be able to make better choices, more easily. Buying should be easier as customers find more, […]
“Doing More,” Is Not A Growth Strategy! Neither Are Miracle Cures!
As sales professionals, we are responsible for driving revenue growth for our companies. We are accountable for executing our overall corporate strategies and priorities in our chosen markets. We develop, or should be developing, “go to customer strategies” to achieve our goals. We assess things like our ICP. We look at how to we reach and engage the customers in our ICP effectively and efficiently. We assess our value creation and differentiation strategies. The strategy will look at things like overall structure and engagement process. Do we leverage channels and partners? Do we sell direct and what the organization we […]