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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
The “Adrenaline Rush” Of Crises
I have to confess, I’m a bit of an Adrenaline junkie. I revel in a crisis, I’m challenged and excited about tough problems. Talking to me about a critical deal where we must do something now, energizes me. Show me a bad pipeline that we have to “fix” quickly, I roll up my sleeves and dive in. As I reflect on my career, most of it has been in solving very tough problems, I’ve done turnarounds as an executive, I’ve been an executive in a couple of high growth start-ups. In our consulting practice, we work with some of the […]
“What If You Thought Of Things Differently?”
There is one fundamental question that all sales people and managers must think about and ask every day, “What if you thought of things differently?” Sadly, I’m not certain we consciously consider this issue enough. This question is the foundation of our engagement customer engagement strategies. It gets customers to think about how our solutions might be a better fit than our competitors. Or it gets them to challenge the status quo. It may get them to rethink how they get things done, how they might grow, how they might address new opportunities. This question is the foundation of every […]
Your Customers Aren’t Buying Your Product, So Why Do You Keep Selling It?
I’ve been sitting in a lot of deal reviews recently. The clients are in varied businesses, ranging from software technologies, medical devices, capital equipment, electronic components, financial services, and so forth. But in each of these reviews, there is a common pattern. Whenever I ask the questions, “What is the customer trying to do, What are they seeking to change about how they grow their businesses,” the responses follow a similar pattern. “They need to buy data security software, they need to buy electronic components, they need to buy cloud management software, they need to buy…..” 100% of the time, […]
Does The Right Hand Know What The Left Hand Is Doing?
It’s the end of the fiscal year for many. Simultaneously, sales organizations are scrambling to close deals and make this year’s number. At the same time, they are putting the finishing touches on next year’s plans. I get asked to sit in on a lot of these plan reviews. I see product management present reviews on new product announcements/plans for the coming year. Marketing presents their programs and plans. They talk about demand gen plans and goals. Sales presents their plans, what they are going to do to achieve their numbers. Individually, they are often brilliant (OK, maybe I’m being […]
Selling In A Covid-19 World
We all know the world has changed profoundly in the past year. So much of what we have always done no longer works–or may no longer be smart. Our work as sales people has changed, probably forever. We are learning how to engage our customers in new ways, and across multiple channels. Within our own organizations, we are having to engage our peers and people in different ways. Consciously focusing on engagement is critical–both how our customers feel engaged and how our people feel engaged. It’s so easy for people to feel isolated and disconnected from others and their work. […]
“We Will Never Revert Back….”
The pandemic and associated economic disruption has forced all of us to reinvent how we work. Whether it’s within our own organizations, with customers, partners, or suppliers, everything has come up for grabs. We have had to rethink everything we do. What’s really intriguing is the pandemic has provided a forcing function, driving us to make changes or rethink ours strategies and approaches–but they are things we should have done years ago, independent of the pandemic. Somehow, success, “just good enough growth,” getting by, or cluelessness have stood in the way of changes that should have been made years ago. […]