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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
What Do We Stop?
There are endless articles about what we should stop doing, as sales and marketing professionals, as a result of COVID-19. I think a lot of this is good advice. But the problem I have is that we shouldn’t stop these things just because of the current crisis. We should stop these because they represent bad practice. They are programs and things that we have been doing that target the wrong customers, that waste their time, that do not create value with/for the customer, that are more focused on our goals/efficiency than the customer. We should stop things that are manipulative, […]
Should We Be Selling?
The COVID 19 and related issues have brought about a plethora of “Should We Be Selling” articles. I’ve made my position clear in previous posts. But I saw a headline that caught my attention. Should we be selling? The answer is simply, “no”. We should be humanizing. I was struck by this, not for what it said, but by the clear implication that selling is not about “humanizing,” and we should, in this crisis, shift our focus. This, I think is the root of what has gone caused so much to go off course about selling over the past several […]
COVID 19 Lessons For Current And Better Times
The COVID 19 crisis is forcing all of us to deal with issues few of us have ever faced. The risk, complexity, uncertainties, fear are profound. It impacts every individual, organization, society. But it’s fascinating to see how tragedy brings out the best in people and the best in addressing crises. Everyday, we are learning things that help us deal with the challenges presented by the virus and it’s impact on our lives, companies, nations, and economy. Even more interesting is to think about, how we apply what we learn in the future–whatever the new normal might look like. Here […]
Automation Run Amuck
Technology is a double edged sword. We can use it to improve the impact, value, effectiveness, and efficiency in engaging prospects and customers. At the same time, we can use it to drive away customers/prospects by creating crap at the speed of light. Unfortunately, rather than doing the former, in focusing on our own self centered objectives, we end up doing the latter. Technology is agnostic on whether it can be leveraged to create value or harass. Technology doesn’t care whether what we do is ethical or not. Technology doesn’t. Technology is just a tool that can be used to […]
Buying During Difficult Times
Complex B2B buying is never easy. I’ve written, extensively, about how difficult it is for buyers to align diverse priorities and agendas, and navigate the buying process. The majority of buying ends in no decision made. The need hasn’t disappeared, the customer, for various good/bad reasons just fail to make a buying decision. We are learning, as sales people, what we need to do is help the customer organize to buy and navigate their buying process. We know we have to help customers make sense of what they face and what they’d like to achieve. More than anything, we have […]
Pick Up The Phone And Talk To A Customer
It’s a unique time in history. We are all struggling with fear, uncertainty, risk. Physical separation and isolation is becoming increasingly important, both for our own safety, but also for the safety of others. Unfortunately, this separation and isolation creates social isolation–which is very unhealthy. Human beings are social creatures, we are used to and thrive on day to day interaction with our colleagues, suppliers, customers. We are used to participating in meeting after meeting (perhaps a silver lining to what we are going through is we will bee more thoughtful about meetings.). We are used to chatting with each […]