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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
Stopping Our Metrics Obsession!
Metrics are important. They provide a means of helping us understand whether we are on target to achieving our goals. They also give us insight into potential changes in the market. As we “instrument” more of the selling process, whether through CRM, mobile tools, and other means, we have the capability of measuring many more things than we have in the past. Recently, I was doing some reading on metrics. One group recommended tracking the following: Meetings/Opportunity, Time between touches, Opportunity conversion, Untouched opportunities, Contacts per account, Follow up meeting ratio, Opportunity progression, Email engagement rate, Total opportunities engaged, New […]
Faux Transformations
The word “transformation,” has become the buzzword for 2018. Every consultant, guru, prognosticator talks about transformation. Within organizations, executives proudly present their transformation strategies. Yeah, I also use the word–possibly too much. The problem is, when one looks at most of these “transformations,” nothing looks that different from before, certainly the outcomes don’t look any better-much of the research data would suggest sales/marketing performance is getting worse. Too often, a new technology tool is viewed as transformative, but instead, organizations often end up doing the same things they always have, just assisted by expensive new technology. In some cases, all […]
In Praise Of Pushy Sales People
I probably should come out of the closet. I’m a pushy sales person. Perhaps some will recommend a 12 step program or some other therapy to make me less pushy. But, to be honest, I like being pushy. My customers and clients, for the most part, appreciate it too–though at some times my pushiness makes them uncomfortable. (I’ll come to that later.) By now, some of you may be thoroughly confused. If you’ve read my blog for some time, this would seem out of character. Many would say, “No one likes a pushy sales person.” So it’s important to provide […]
Never Cease Trying To Be The Best You Can Be–That’s Under Your Control
Every once in a while, I have a truly outstanding week. These are weeks where my clients and I take on big challenges and tough issues, trying to figure out what courses of actions should be taken. Last week, I was with several clients, one in luxury real estate, two in high technology. Each is a top performer, not just within their own industries or regions, but they are viewed as top performers by those in other sectors. As an example, I was running a planning workshop with one. Sitting as observers in the workshop were the senior sales executives […]
Productive Conflict
Over the past week, I’ve been involved in several conversations that have the same underlying theme. It’s basically around the concept of Productive Conflict. I believe this is a critical concept–both in how we engage our customers and in driving change internally. At the same time, I believe it is misunderstood, avoided, and executed very poorly with horrible results. As sales people and/or as business leaders, we are responsible for driving change. Whether it is with/for our customers our within our organizations. Change always creates conflicts, though we may not recognize them as such. Why change, change to what, change […]
The Sales Jigsaw Puzzle
Every once in a while, I like to do a jigsaw puzzle. It’s nice to do in the evening, no distraction from devices, there’s the great tactile feeling as I pick up a new piece, trying to figure out where it fits. Then there’s the great reward at the end, once all the pieces are in place, you finally see the whole picture and it makes sense. Sometimes, I think selling, and all the things sales people must do to be successful, is something like a jigsaw puzzle. It’s often confusing and difficult to understand each of the pieces/parts until […]