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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
The “Miracle” Of Real Time AI Coaching
I’m participating in an AI Conference where so much of the discussion is around agentic AI. A number of speakers have focused on the concept of “Real time AI coaching.” I’m also seeing a lot of this in many of the new AI selling platforms, it seems to be THE next thing in driving seller performance. The scenario for this real time AI coaching is something like this. Imagine being on some sort of Zoom/Teams or other call. There’s a window on the side of your screen, an AI agent is monitoring the call, “whispering” into our ears….. “Dave you […]
What’s All The Fuss, Prompt Engineering Isn’t New…..
My feeds are filled with the miracles and mysteries of prompt engineering. I’m attending an AI for Sales Conference, where the underlying theme is “we have to master prompt engineering.” I scratch my head, thinking, “What’s the fuss? I’ve been doing prompt engineering all my career. We just never called it that!” Not long ago, I was contacted by the RevOps/Enablement team of a very large SaaS company. They had been exposed to some of the AI tools we provide many of our clients. Initially, they said, “You are using AI in a very different way than most. We’d love […]
Embrace The “Suck!”
Our work in selling is tough. There are details to manage, conflicts to resolve, shifts in direction. Some of the work is tedious, even unpleasant. Much of it is exhausting. When the work gets tough, our natural reaction is avoidance. At the same time, we mask that avoidance with busyness and activity. We avoid the hard things, occupying ourselves with activities–more emails, more research, more meetings. Activity makes us feel and appear productive, but at the same time, we are avoiding the real issues and problems. We procrastinate until we are forced to do it–hoping that no one sees this […]
“Buyers Don’t Hate Sellers, They Hate Bad Selling!”
Paraphrasing my friend Hank Barnes, “Buyers don’t hate sellers, they hate bad selling!” Sellers struggle to reach and engage prospects and customers. Every outreach is ignored. Buyers actively seek other channels to learn about solutions and products, avoiding sellers as much as possible. When they do engage, it’s as late in their buying process as possible. We have our own personal experiences, being the victims of meaningless outreaches, horrible sales pitches. Ironically, we screen all our calls (thanks IOS 26 for your help), we have spam filters and agents emptying our inboxes, we ignore the social media DMs and Invitations—but […]
KPIs, When You Measure Everything, You Measure Nothing!
Key Performance Indicators are meant to achieve one thing, sharpen our focus. They help translate our strategies into focused execution. The KPIs help us understand the things that are most important in achieving our goals. They serve to align the organization around these critical goals and activities. They give everyone involved in executing the strategies a common focus around the things that matter most. But we’ve become enamored with KPIs, every program, every part of the organization, every project has it’s own set of KPIs. Each role within the organization has their KPIs. Where they were intended to drive clarity, […]
Ask Questions That Require Thinking
We are trained to ask questions. But our orientation is to ask questions that demand answers. As a result, conversations often resemble a ping pong game. The server starts with a question, then the response, back and forth. Then the other person serves, asks a question, expects a response, back and forth. A lot of information is exchanged, but the exchange of information doesn’t mean that we are connecting and having collaborative conversations. And if all we are doing is sharing information, there are too many opportunities for others to get that information through other sources. As a result the […]