Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Paying Attention
As trivial as it may seem, the ability to pay attention is one of the most important behaviors for success. But what does this really mean, particularly when we have so much competing for our attention, and when we invest so much in getting the attention of others? Too often, it seems we focus more on the mechanics of what we do. losing sight of our purpose or what our actions mean–to ourselves and others. The act of paying attention is one of focusing intensely and compassionately on the world and people around us. Our acts of attentiveness shape everything […]
The Interview….
It’s Friday, it’s been a busy, but great week. Sometimes, my mind starts turning into jelly and goes to weird places. I imagined myself interviewing for the CRO position in a high growth start up. Dave: Thanks for the opportunity to speak, I’m sure I can have a great impact in driving growth in your sales organization. CEO: I’m excited to speak to you. Can you tell me a little about the results you produced in your last role. Dave: We were scaling aggressively. We grew ARR tremendously past two years that I’ve been there. VCs are investing and have […]
Scratching My Head In Amazement……
Andy Paul called my attention to a discussion in LinkedIn. It was, yet another, discussion on “sales math.” This one reported on research on win rates. It reported win rates declining from 2022 to 2024 from 23% to 19%, with win rates for deals with ACV over $100K declining from 18% to 16%. The data, by itself, is stunning. But the conversation related to the post was even more shocking, from too many perspectives. First, there appeared to be no “shock and awe” about these data points. There seemed to be virtual shrugging, “That’s just the way things are…” In […]
Change, Do We Really Understand It?
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a trite saying, but “The only constant in life is change……” Let me go through a few more just to get them off my chest: Thanks for your patience, I need to get those out of my system. As much as we tire talking about the constancy of change, our jobs as sellers only exist because of change. We are trying to get our customers to change from the current products or services they are using, to our products and services. We want the customer to change how they are approaching a certain function in […]
Committed To Not Changing!
We spend 100’s of millions on SKO speakers, books, and training–all focused on doing the things that drive business, sales and marketing performance. We are inspired by thousands of articles, podcasts, and videos–each offering the same answers to what we have to do to be successful. (I contribute my fair share to the clutter.) We know what we have to do, and, for the most part, each of us is well intended–we really want to do the things that cause us, our customers, and our companies to be successful. For example, as sales people, we know–without a doubt that: We’ve […]
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Inshal Khawaja
Preface: Every once in a while, by pure chance, we meet someone who is inspiring. This is my experience with Inshal Khawaja. I first met Inshal about a year ago. I was working with Howard Dover on a “business acumen” program he was introducing into the UTD curriculum in the Fall of 2023. It involved interviews of senior sales executives. Ultimately, this would be done by students. I had piloted the concept through interviews with dozens of executives, but we needed to see how students would be able to implement the program. Inshal was working with Howard, so he assigned […]