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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
Lessons For Sales Leadership
One of my favorite podcasts is the Lessons For Sales Leadership, hosted by Brent Adamson. Both Brent’s skill as an interviewer and his “heavy hitter” guests make this one of my favorites, and one where I learn from great sales leaders. Part of the reason I like the podcast is that Brent interviews some of the most experienced practitioners in the world. Not consultants or guru’s with an opinion, but senior leaders who, daily, are responsible for guiding the efforts of thousands of people, generating billions in revenue. These leaders are deeply thoughtful about their strategies, customers, and the people […]
Not All Revenue Is “Good Revenue”
You are probably reading this title thinking, “Dave has finally flipped out. We knew he was headed that direction, but he’s gone!” Let me explain myself, revenue is important. But it’s important to look at the composition of that revenue to understand not only how it meets your current goals/objectives, but how it positions your organization/company for future growth. Let’s dissect what good and bad revenue looks like: First, it’s sales responsibility to execute the company strategy in the face of the customer. Stated differently, sales has to sell the entire product portfolio, not just their favorite products. Let’s imagine […]
The Courage To Be A Great Sales Leader
It takes great courage, self confidence, and conviction to be a great sales leader. Think of the job for a moment. It’s a job where there are no “right answers.” There are a variety of methods, strategies, and approaches to achieving the organization’s goals. Each has it’s pros/cons, none is guaranteed to work. But you have to do something. It’s a job of immense complexity, change, disruption, and uncertainty. Our customers are changing (and facing changes) rapidly, our competition is changing-with new competitors appearing every day, our markets are changing, and our companies are changing. Despite all of this, great […]
How Good Are “Best Practices?”
Thousands of blogs, books, articles, video’s, and podcasts talk about “best practices.” They cover every topic imaginable. Every nuance of marketing, sales, customer experience, business, dating (oops) talk about best practices. As consumers of information about how to improve, we devour best practices. The thought is, “If I know what’s best practice, and apply it in my organization, we will be doing the very best things we can be doing and should see huge performance improvements.” The problem with best practices are that they are only “best” in a specific context. That is, what is best for others, may not […]
We Have “Customer Intelligence,” But Little Intelligent Selling/Marketing
I’m sorry for whining, perhaps I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Lately, I’ve been inundated with discussions on Customer Intelligence. PR folks are blindly sending me announcements from providers of Customer Intelligence solutions–though it seems they’ve applied no customer or any other intelligence in their outreach. I’m deluged, every day, with emails and phone calls from sales people wanting to sell me Customer Intelligence solutions. Though, it’s hard to understand how, if those solutions were used in targeting me, I might be a prospect. We have long had tools that provide varying capabilities of customer intelligence. […]
Prisoners Of Our Own Experience
Recently, I had separate discussions with two very good sales executives. Each was taking a very strong position on particular aspects of selling. As the discussions progressed, I could see their perspectives were limited by their experience. One was talking about how to drive decision-making on deals. He was taking a position, “This is the way everything gets done. If you aren’t doing this, you will fail!” I pushed him on his statements, “What causes you to reach these conclusions?” He responded, “Every company I’ve worked for, every deal I have worked on fits this pattern. It’s what I’ve learned […]