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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 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 […]
“What Could Go Wrong?”
It seems to be human nature that we don’t want to think about what could go wrong. Particularly in sales, we are continually optimistic, we want to be positive, particularly with our customers. So why would we ever want to talk about what could go wrong? Particularly when we are in the middle of the customer buying process? But it’s an important discussion with our customers, primarily because it helps them think differently and more completely. Doing this creates great value, because it is actually focused on the customer success. It may sound odd, but if we only focus on […]
What Do Uber Drivers And SDRs Have In Common?
Think of this post more as a thought experiment or even a wild ass prognistication. What do Uber drivers and SDRs have in common? Let’s look at Uber first. Uber has made it very clear, autonomous vehicles are their future. There are a lot of reasons for this. Autonomous vehicles eliminate much of one of Uber’s biggest challenges: Consistency of customer experience. Even though Uber tries very hard to create a great customer experience, the majority of it is influenced by the drivers. I’ve been fortunate, in the hundreds of Uber rides I’ve had, fewer than a handful have been […]
The Sales Conversation
In some recent projects, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze sales conversations. I’ve been tracking conversations sales people are having, from the very first conversation to the closing conversations. We know each conversation is different, they vary from company to company, customer to customer. But listening to enough of them, one starts to notice patterns. Here’s a brief synopsis of how conversations seem to progress through the selling cycle: “Hello, let me tell you about our product, would you be interested in learning more?” “Let me send you links to some case studies and brochures.” “This is more of what […]
If We Fixed Sales Execution, Would We Fix Sales?
Let’s try a thought experiment. You will see some of the assumptions are very simplistic, they will become obvious as we move through the thought experiment. They don’t impact the thought experiment. For the moment, suspend your judgement and bear with me. The reason I want you to walk through this is to help you think about what I think is the biggest challenge facing sales leaders in maximizing the performance of their organizations: Talent. By Talent, I mean finding/attracting the right people to our organizations, onboarding them effectively, developing them to both perform and the highest levels possible and […]