Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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.
I read an article about how to be a successful sales manager. One of the pieces of “insight” was to manage and coach by results versus micromanaging or counting activities. He goes on to say, “people will find their own path to the target…..” Well, yes, but…….. There are a lot of problems with the advice, it sounds good, but when you dive in, virtually all elements become problematic. The author got 85% there—but missed the most important 15%. Let’s dissect it. We expect, measure, and compensate our people on results. But we know results and outcomes are a trailing […]
Read MoreI found myself talking about a “Value Proposition.” It caused me to pause, thinking about the concept of a “Value Proposition” and whether it has meaning any more. Too often, the Value Proposition, is a sentence or two that we are trained to deliver at some point a conversation. To make sure our customers don’t miss it, we tend to say, “Our value proposition is…….” When we remember the “script” and articulate our Value Proposition, it is often so distant and depersonalized to the customer, to have had little value. It’s further diminished, when they are hearing the same thing […]
Read MoreSo much of our training and our engagement strategies involve our talking. We’re taught how to pitch our solutions. We’re given scripts outlining what we should say to our customers. As managers, we too often get into “tell” mode. Even when we ask questions, they are carefully constructed to elicit the answers we want. Alternatively, we listen for triggers to talk more. The problem is that talking crowds out our ability to listen and truly hear. Duuggghhhh! It’s obvious, we know when we talk we aren’t listening—and perhaps that’s really our goal. Perhaps we don’t really care about what the […]
Read MorePardon me from diverting from my normal writing on sales, leadership and business to reflect for a moment on September 11, 2001. It impacted and impacts each of us in very different ways. First, on the evening of September 10, 2001, I arrived home from a 3 week business trip to Africa. I had been touring major cities throughout Africa with my client. We were setting up a major new distribution network, helping the distributors develop richer business plans, training them, positioning them to more effectively grow their and my client’s business. Over the course of 3 weeks, I met […]
Read MoreThere’s always a lot of talk about corporate culture, values, and beliefs. Too often, these are treated as “PR.” Annual reports, analyst reports, communications to customers and communications within industry, espouse the culture of the company—and every once in a while, the companies actually demonstrate these in the way they work. Every company has a culture, values, beliefs—though those may not be what they claim them to be. We can understand the “real culture, values, and beliefs,” by the behaviors and actions we see demonstrated every day, at all levels. For example a company may declare itself to be customer […]
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