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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
“We Need Training…..”
The email came in, “We need training. We’ve seen your programs before, can you talk to us about a training program?” I quickly arranged a discussion, “What kind of training do you need?” “We need sales training,” came the response. “What kind of sales training do you need?” I ask. “Sales training, our people aren’t performing the way we expect,” came the response. “Where are they struggling? What is the performance shortfall?” I ask. “They are meeting their quotas and our growth goals,” came the response. “Why aren’t they meeting those goals? Are they struggling in specific areas?” I ask. […]
“We’re Doing Everything Right, But Nothing’s Working!”
I was struck by this sentence in a LI post today, “We are doing everything right, but nothing’s working!” I see variants of this every day: Scratching my head at these and similar statements, I wonder, “If you are doing everything right, then it should be working! That’s how designing and executing your GTM/selling strategies work! If it isn’t producing the desired outcome, then there is something flawed in the design or in what you are doing!” I’m constantly befuddled by the acceptance of YoY slips in revenue performance, slips in % of people making quota, slips in win rates […]
What About The Questions?
As I participate or observe conversations, I count questions. If it’s between a buyer/seller, I count the number of open ended questions each person asks. It’s a quick checkpoint for the quality of conversation and engagement of each person in the conversation. I “disqualify” a lot of questions. Closed ended questions have limited utility in conversations–some are necessary, but typically it’s very few. Questions like, “Do you like the features of our products,” are virtually meaningless. Regardless of whether the answer is Yes, No, None of the Above, neither party learns much from these questions. Likewise, questions with an agenda, […]
Remembering Lita
Pardon me for making a slight digression in my posts on leadership, GTM, selling, AI, and other things. On Friday, I lost Lita. Lita was about 11 years old, a rescue cat. She was special in so many ways. She touched everyone she met. While it seems odd, I think she made me a better person (as all our pets do). I found her–rather she found me about 3.5 years ago. I wanted another cat to keep Harley company. At the shelter, I was actually looking at a couple of other cats. They put me in a room with about […]
Is AI That Good, Or Are We That Bad?
The answer to the question, “Is AI that good, or are we that bad,” is resounding YES! To both. Everyday, we see great applications of AI, particularly when coupled with outstanding human based thinking. At the same time, I see endless examples where AI isn’t doing anything better, it isn’t outthinking sellers, it’s simply outperforming sellers in fundamentals. It outperforms them in the things they should be doing, but simply aren’t, or they are doing them poorly. What we see is a knowing-doing gap in how so many sellers and GTM professionals work. We know what we should be doing […]
Shit We Have To Stop!
This week, two separate conversations with CROs. Completely different markets/industries, both high performing in their segments. But they were deeply frustrated. “We’re struggling to make our numbers!” As we dove into it, their markets were OK, customers were still growing and investing. Then we dove into the data, pipelines very anemic, but win rates, average deal sizes, sales cycles were reasonable. “What are they doing to find and qualify new opportunities? Where are they struggling with their prospecting?” I asked. As we reviewed it, their teams were doing pretty good jobs, there were some areas of improvement, but it seemed […]