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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
Saving Time Is The Wrong Goal For AI
Virtually all the “hot tips, prompt cheats,” and other insights into AI focus on saving time. We want AI to do the work for us, so we can better spend our time elsewhere. Ironically, when I ask people how they are now spending their time, they shrug their shoulders and say, “More of the same….” We are almost exclusively focused on one metric: efficiency. We have tools that draft emails in seconds, summarize hour-long meetings in bullet points, and generate endless reports. The idea is that if AI can do the work for us, we save minutes here and there, […]
Why We Settle (And How To Stop)
You want to pursue excellence. You know you should. You’ve read the books, attended the training, made the commitments. So why don’t you? This isn’t a question about knowledge. You know what to do. It’s not about capability. You can do it. The question is why capable people, who genuinely want to be excellent, keep choosing to settle. What causes, this, what’s happening? It’s all in your mind. You’re fighting your own wiring. Neuroscience research shows that human beings are wired to move toward what feels good now and away from what feels painful. Excellence requires doing hard things, they […]
A “Salesperson,” The Reputation We Have Earned
My friend, Lori Richardson, published a post on a debate she had with her dentist on salespeople. Describing salespeople, he made the statement, “Yea, those folks that lie and rip people off.” While that phrasing may be extreme, unfortunately we hear things like that every day. I’ve been a seller or deeply involved in selling virtually all my career, and I cringe with 99% of the stuff that ends up in my Inbox, LI invitations, and others. I never answer a call from a number I don’t recognize. I don’t want to have anything to do with the majority of […]
The End Of Year Scramble
It’s the near end of the year. In addition to preparing for the Holidays, you are scrambling to make your numbers. For a small few, you’ve got it in the bag, you may even be putting a few orders in your desk drawer for a fast start in January. But for most, it’s a scramble, one that goes until 11:59 PM, December 31st. You are putting all the effort in, you may squeak by, but most will fall short. This is a pattern, not just the end of the year, but quarter by quarter. You are working hard, management is […]
Our Use Of AI As A “Performative” Tool
There is a fantastic theatrical organization in my community, It’s called the B-Street Theatre. They bring in talent from all over the country to perform in fantastic mostly comedic shows. As a “patron,” every once in a while I get invited to a dinner with some of the performers. We talk about the shows, how they prepare, what it’s like to perform, and so forth. One evening, I was talking to a cast member about his role in a recent play. The character he play was a deeply thoughtful, reflective person, who came out with the most brilliant ideas and […]
Stop Copying What High Performers Do, Copy How They Think
We are constantly examining high performers, whether it’s individuals or organizations. We study what they do, thinking if we do the same things we can be high performers as well. We examine the GTM strategies of organizations that have scaled to unicorn status, convinced that if we do the same, we can scale like they did. We tear apart everything they are doing, copying and adapting it to our own organizations. We do the same with our tools, technologies, programs, processes and training. A company has gotten phenomenal results from implementing a specific training program, or a new technology tool, […]