Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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.
Yes, I’m whining about inept, manipulative prospecting. This might also be titled, “How stupid do you think your prospects are?” Several weeks ago, I get a LinkedIn Invitation: Dear David, Allow me to ask to be connected with you as I remember that your name and Partners In EXCELLENCE were mentioned during a conversation at the [Organization Name] conference, last December in Berlin. This connection is a first step to explore mutual interests. Best, [Name withheld to protect the clueless] Nice play to my ego and narcissism. I respond: Dear [Clueless], thanks for the note. I’m curious, what was the […]
Read MoreToo often, as executives look to improve sales performance, they look to doing something new or different. It may be adopting a new methodology, new technologies or tools, changing your go to customer strategies. Any of these can improve sales performance, but the come with their costs. Since these represent major changes, the change management process and time involved in solidifying changes can be very long. Again, with any change, or doing something “new” or “different,” there are huge risks, and then there are the costs. Ironically, when we assess the performance of organizations, we find they aren’t as effective […]
Read MoreIt’s that time of year. Many senior sales execs are starting their planning for next fiscal year. Inevitably, the commission plan becomes part of the discussion. “Dave, if only we get the right commission plan, we will fix all our performance problems! Can you help?” Of course I can help, but I always ask, “What makes you think it’s the compensation plan that’s standing in the way of sales performance?” The answers are pretty predictable, vague ideas about sales people being money driven, so all we have to do is show them the path to making more money, then they […]
Read MoreThere’s a lot of discussion about how important it is for sales people to “build their personal brands.” I’ve written about this topic several times before, even using the same title before. But it’s a topic, as much as I wish would go away, doesn’t. But what does it mean to build our personal brands? Many advocate building a massive social media presence–doing everything one can by increasing your presence in places like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social channels. Apparently, we are supposed to blog and tweet. We are supposed to be constantly involved in conversations or other […]
Read MoreToo often, I’m in reviews with sales people whining, “The customer is irrational!” They go through a litany of complaints, including: “They don’t understand our products and why they are superior…..” (Of course it’s not their job to do that.) “They keep changing their minds….” “They aren’t being logical, we’ve presented all the data/analysis, it should be obvious….” and on and on and on….. The net of it seems to be “customers are behaving irrationally when they don’t do the things we want them to do.” There’s the managerial version of the same thing, whining about their people. You know […]
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