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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
Rethinking Time
While it’s trite, I have to start with some basic assumptions about time. Time is virtually the only thing each of us face, that is fixed or finite. Regardless how much we might wish or try, we cannot make more time. We can only think of how we reallocate what we do with time and how we use the time that we have. We seek to get the most out of each minute we have, wasting as little as possible (though “wasted time,” may actually be some of the most useful time, more later.) There are a number of ways […]
Coaching Has A Shelf Life
We are most effective in coaching when we are focused on an observable behavior. That is, “I observed you doing this….” “When this happens, you tend to do…” “What would happen if…..” Observable behaviors critical to effective coaching. They provide the context for the conversation. But observable behaviors have a shelf life, or use by date. We wait too long and they lose their impact, simply because both we and the person we are coaching may have cloudy memories of everything surrounding what we are talking about. Imagine the difference between these two scenarios: “Remember those calls you made a […]
Win Fast, Lose Faster
Losing fast, having the courage to walk away from a deal that you are highly unlikely to win is tough for everyone. But it’s actually one of the important things you can do to drive your sales performance. In the past 4 weeks, I’ve walked away from 2 deals. The first, I knew I could win. It was a very small deal, but the CEO was putting constraints around the project that were unreasonable, they hampered our ability to produce the results he expected. I couldn’t shift his opinions. Sure, I could have taken his money and delivered what he […]
Do Just This One Thing!
Imagine coaching a basketball player, “All you have to do is master your foul shots, they are the single most important thing to win games.” All of us, even those who don’t play basketball, would say this is ridiculous coaching. We would argue you have to master everything—dribbling, passing, inside and outside shots, defense, playmaking, and on and on. We immediately recognize that to be a great basketball player, you have to master everything. Yet when we look at advice on on selling, it’s completely opposite. We are deluged with “Just do this one thing……” That thing, is whatever the […]
What Is Networking?
In the “old days,” networking seemed to be about meeting people, learning about them, building a bit of a relationship. There was value in networking. Often, our networking may have been a passing meeting, a chance to get to know someone for a few moments, have an interesting conversation, only to move on in our separate directions. Sometimes, it led to something more substantive, perhaps some follow up conversations, perhaps a deeper relationship. Sometimes, perhaps at the most crass level, it provided a context or reference point to being able to “sell them something.” We’ve all experience “networking,” where the […]
Goals And Activities Are Different!
I had asked a coaching client to put together a 90 day plan, outlining his goals over the next 30-60-90 days. The plan was very thoughtful. He outlined a lot of important activities. As we spoke, I said, “I asked for your goals, but you identified activities. How do you know those activities help you achieve your goals, how do you know if you’ve achieved your goals?” He’s not alone, whether I’m working with the top executives looking at organizational goals/challenges/problems; or sales people improving their results; or coaching individuals; we mistakenly define activities as our goals. Some that current […]