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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
FUD-Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt
FUD has been an element, unfortunately, of sales and selling probably since the very first transaction between Adam and Eve. It’s been a tactic many exploit in competitive situations, perhaps the thinking being creating FUD within the customer about the competitive vendor, or creating FUD around making a decision not in favor of us. Early in my career, there was a saying (I think more mythology), “No one ever got fired for making an IBM decision….” Hank Barnes recently addressed this with a terrific post, “Revisiting Thoughts On FUD (It’s Time For A New Approach).” It provoked my thoughts about […]
Role Clarity
Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend on role clarity. By that, at the base level, I mean, “What’s my job?” There’s an odd dynamic that goes on, at all levels. We get so busy in the activities we do in our jobs that we don’t understand what our jobs are. Of course, we have some idea–if we are sales people, we have to get out and sell, we have to make our quotas. If we are SDRs, we have to follow our scripts, make our numbers for outbound/inbound calls, create SQLs or SALs. If we are […]
Data, Data Everywhere….
“Water water everywhere, Nor a drop to drink…” is a famous line from Coleridge’s “The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.” At a recent lunch, my friend, Tim Ohai, and I were talking about problems we see with too many managers. Today’s tools provide sales people and leaders more data than we have ever had before. We can measure about every activity we undertake, every engagement with our customers. We have endless pipeline, performance, customer activity, competitive and other data. We have data going back years, enabling us to understand shifts or changes over time. Analytics and AI enable new ways […]
“The Art Of The Bluff”
I was stunned and appalled to read an article sponsored by a major sales publication promoting the “Art of the bluff.” The author was cautious to highlight the negative connotations around bluffing–the feeling of manipulation, the proximity to lying, and the knife edge a “bluffer’ must walk to avoid lying. Trying as hard as I could, I sought something redeeming in the article and that I could learn. I couldn’t find a thing, in fact the article was dangerously out of touch with modern buying/selling, portraying sales as a battle between the buyer and the seller, with each seeking advantage […]
On Gratitude
Today, in the US, it’s Thanksgiving Day. In principle, a day of giving thanks, though most often displaced with overindulging in food and drink, followed by football games or binging on Netflix (now you know my plans). While this is not a novel idea, it’s amazing that we reserve one day, out of 365, for giving thanks. I have to confess, as much as I try, I tend to slip up, not taking the time each day do find something to be grateful for—though there is always so much, when I just pause to reflect. I, also, don’t express my […]
Initiative Overload
Individually and organizationally, we are obsessed with getting things done. It’s important, it’s how we learn, grow, and achieve. Too often, however, this obsession is dysfunctional. We overload ourselves and our organizations with too many things—too many “strategic initiatives,” too many meetings, too many “top priorities,” too much activity. Too often, in our quest to get thing things done, we get nothing done. But we are busy! Too many of us fell victim to the fashion, several years ago, of multitasking–only to find we accomplished much less. Or in some cases, like driving, created real danger. Depending on the scientific […]