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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
Trick Or Treat?
I realize it’s 2 weeks past Halloween, but I am compelled to write this post. So much of the discussion about selling and marketing seems to focus on “the tricks” of engaging customers. For example, a friend recently called my attention to a discussion, about how much time a sales person should ask for a discussion. It turns out reply rates are 61% higher for 5-10 minutes, versus 20-30 minutes. This attracted over 100 comments (as of this writing), mostly saying, “fantastic data,” others offering small refinements, “6 minutes and 37 seconds is optimal.” OK I made that up, but […]
“Are We There Yet?”
Recently, I was on a road trip. I knew where I needed to end up and what time I had to be there. Before leaving, I looked at Google Maps, got a rough idea of how to go and how much time I should allow. I sent the destination to my car, so the nav system could guide me on the best route. I was a little worried, I saw there was some construction, and the weather report said there might be snow over the mountains. So I added a little more time to make sure I reached my destination […]
Project Management And Sales Methodology
Recently, I wrote, The Next-Gen Sales Methodology. In it, I posited that project management and problem solving methods are core to a much more modern sales methodology. Be sure to read that, to understand the thinking and rationale. Let’s first understand the basics of project management. Project management is basically a work plan/process that enables us to accomplish our objectives in a disciplined, effective, and efficient manner. In good project plans, we identify a goal we want to achieve and a target completion date. For example, we might have a project to design and launch a mobile phone. We establish […]
What Does This Metric Mean To Me?
We measure a lot of stuff in sales. We have all sorts of pipeline metrics, activity metrics, prospecting metrics, account, territory, retention, renewal, mix, margin, and endless other metrics. We have an entire alphabet soup of metrics, including MQL, SQL, ARR, ACV, TCV, NPS, MRR, LTV, CAC, Churn, and XYZ (OK, I made that up—I think). We couldn’t manager our personal or organizational performance, without metrics, though, I’ve observed we tend to have too many metrics, and those that we have, we too often misunderstand. Metrics are really just some sort of alert. They can tell us, we are on […]
Thank You President Trump!
I would be remiss, on election day, if I didn’t provide my heartfelt thanks to President Trump. While, principally, I want to thank him for what he has taught me–and so many in this country, the credit is not just his. It also belongs to the Republican and Democratic leadership in this country, all have contributed to my education. Their behaviors in the past 4 years have contributed to the this valuable lesson–so it’s important to recognize all of them and thank them. The last 4 years have been a wake up call to me. Sadly, I have taken my […]
“All Sales Problems Are Pipeline Problems….”
“All sales problems are pipeline problems, and all pipeline problems are prospecting problems…….” I was having a conversation with a really smart person. He went on to say, “Ultimately, we can track most issues to how we opened the engagement…” My immediate reaction was, “Well, yes, but……..” I think too many managers don’t even look this deeply, but have similar views, the solution to all anemic pipelines is more prospecting. They don’t even look at refining the initial engagement approach in prospecting, they just demand more. But I’m uncomfortable with this, I wish diagnosing sales performance issues could be that […]