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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
Micro Improvements, An Update — Losing My Way
Long time followers of this blog know that I’m a tremendous fan of the concept of micro improvements. The underlying concept is “how do I get 1% better each day.” Cumulatively, if I improve 1% every day, I will be over 37 times better at the end of the year. I’m a huge fan of Marshall Goldsmith’s approach, and have adapted some of his principles to my continuous learning/improvement process. I score myself on 20 criteria everyday. Some as simple as, “Did I do my best to exercise? Did I take the time to meditate” Some more abstract, “Did I […]
Just Promoted, New Sales Manager!
You’ve just gotten promoted. You’ve moved from being an individual contributor to managing a team. As you reflect on what do you do in your new role? How do you transition from being a great sales person into being a great sales manager. The mistake, though completely logical and understandable, is to think, “What made me successful in the past? What got me here?” This is followed by the logical conclusion of, “I need to do more of the same!” It’s perfectly natural to think this way. But it’s a huge mistake. The job of sales manager is different. The […]
We Need Sellers Who “Sell,” Not Take Orders
I’m suppose, after all the years I’ve spent working with “sales people,” I shouldn’t be surprised. But I continue to be stunned by how few people who are in sales roles, truly sell. Too many are information concierges with an agenda. They are dependent on a prospect finding them, who has done all the heavy lifting. They’ve determined they have a problem, they are doing their homework, they have questions. Need discovery in these cases is not about the customer business needs, challenges, but about the product or service the customer seeks. Changing customer views is more about shifting their […]
Prospecting Is Not An Event!
We get so much about prospecting wrong. We reach out to people who are far outside our ICP, people we should never be talking to, wasting our/their time. We contact other prospects, only to pitch our products and services, ending with, “Are you interested, can I invite you to a demo.” We don’t do our homework, we don’t understand the customer, their challenges or where they might be interested in helping. We inundate prospects with email after email, call after call, LinkedIn messages, texts, everything. We believe “volume” is the path to prospecting success. And every once in a while, […]
Understanding The Numbers
When we talk about business, we quickly get to talking about the numbers–revenue, profit, EBITDA, EPS, growth, market cap, market share, customer retention, customer satisfaction, headcount, productivity, inventory, cash flow, assets, liabilities, and on and on. SaaS companies have invented their own versions of the numbers, including ARR, CLV, LTV, CAC, MRR, Churn, and so forth. The numbers generally represent goals, or where we are in achieving those goals. The numbers aren’t what companies do, or why we do what we do, or even how we are doing those things, but they are indicators of how well we are doing […]
Do Your Friggin Homework!
We struggle with achieving goals and producing results. Whether it’s prospecting or working a deal, we diminish our impact and results because we aren’t doing our homework and preparing ourselves and our customers/prospects to accomplish our shared goals. It starts with our prospecting and establishing new relationships. For example, this morning I get a LinkedIn invitation from someone in the ‘protection and counter-terrorism” field. He wanted to connect with professionals in the same field. Or those that say, “I want to learn more about you and your business,” yet they’ve not even taken the time to look at my profile. […]