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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
What If You Only Had 10 Accounts?
I was doing a thought experiment with a team a few days ago. I thought I’d extend it to this audience. Before I do, I recently listened to an interview with Christopher Nolan about his latest movie, The Odyssey. They were filming the whole thing in IMAX, which presented monstrous problems for the speaking parts of the production. In considering how he addressed it he said, “The limitations give everybody a focus.” File that away as we walk through the exercise. The team sold software-based technology tools. While their performance was reasonable, it wasn’t where they wanted it to be. […]
Let’s Stop It With Value Propositions!
Yes, that picture is me. Just got awarded my MBA at UCLA. A week later I was in Manhattan, starting my job at IBM. I was, and still am, awkward. A slightly nerdy guy. In the evenings I started doing what every single man in Manhattan did. I started hanging about in bars, hoping to meet women. As I walked to a bar, I’d be thinking of ways to proposition women I would encounter. I’d come up with lines. Brilliant things like: “Hey girl, I work for big Blue, but you won’t be blue with me…” “My customer is Chase […]
Surrendering My Thinking To Claude
At the outset of this article, I want to acknowledge my arrogance. Many of you might have come to the same conclusion, independently. I won’t apologize for it, because I think it is the backbone of this entire article. By background, I have always thought of myself, and been recognized as a very smart person. At times a deep thinker, at times a big thinker. And, if I’m honest, every once in a while a “whacko.” Most of my career has been built both my ability to think through things and to help others think through things. Now that I’ve […]
The Captain Doesn’t Save A Sinking Ship……
A few months ago, I was having a conversation with a talented CEO. His company was struggling and we were talking about how to turn it around. In a moment of frustration, he shouted, “I’m the Captain of this ship, I’m the only person that can save it!” His frustration and reaction isn’t unusual, we see leadership heroics every day. Whether it’s a front line manager diving in to save a deal, or a senior leader taking over, making all the decisions and directing every action. In reflecting on this, I thought of the Captain of the ship expression. I […]
The Coaching Isn’t the Meeting
We schedule coaching. We block the calendar, our weekly meeting. Maybe an hour, maybe thirty minutes. We do the deal review on Tuesday and the coaching session on Thursday. We prepare for it, we show up to it, we get through it, and we leave believing we coached. The meeting happened, so the coaching must have happened. We check it off our list. That belief is the problem. We’ve turned coaching into an event, a specific meeting. But the thing we are working on with the individual doesn’t work on a schedule. Go back to what I talked about in […]
Stop Coaching The Deal, Playing Whack-A-Mole In Our Coaching
Once a manager accepts that coaching is the job, the next problem shows up immediately. What do you coach? Here’s what is on everyone’s list: Discovery. Qualification. Objection handling. Managing the deal strategy. Pipeline hygiene. Forecast accuracy. Prospecting. Account planning. Using the methodology. Using AI. And that’s just the start. These lists never end. Every item is a real thing a seller could be better at. The temptation of most managers is to coach all of them. In the deal review, they might focus on deal strategy, call planning, and using the methodology. In the pipeline review, pipeline quality, volume/velocity, […]
