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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
Help People Even When You Know They Can’t Help You Back
I”m on another 11 hour plane flight, encamped in my “pod,” I have my noise cancelling headphones on to help isolate me from the activities around me. At these moments, with relatively few distractions, I take some time to reflect and be a little more philosophical. I started thinking about the “expectation of reciprocity.” Stated differently, “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” How did I get to pondering this issue? Part of it is the never-ending, mindless chatter/offers I get on platforms like LinkedIn. People reach out, “I saw your profile, you have an interesting background, we have lots […]
What’s Your “Net Promoter Score?”
The “Net Promoter Score,” has been around for a long time. In 2003, Fred Reichheld introduced it in his HBR article: “One Number You Need To Grow” The concept of the NPS is simple, you ask a customer: How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? The answer is usually rated on a 0-10 scale. Promoters are those providing scores of 9-10, Detractors are those providing scores of 0-6. The NPS Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. It’s not unusual for an organization to have […]
Do Your People Own Their Commitments/Responsibilities?
A sales manager was whining to me, “My sales people don’t do what I tell them to do! How do I get them to do the things I want them to do?” He went on a rampage describing how they weren’t meeting their commitments, how they weren’t doing the things that drove the best results, how they were not meeting the organization’s priorities. He was actually right, many of the people weren’t meeting their commitments. I asked, “Have you asked them what they think they should be doing and what they want to do?” He gave me one of those […]
In Praise Of Boring Sales Organizations
Over the last several weeks, I’ve seen a similar issue with 4 different companies. On the surface, each seemed to have a very disciplined approach to developing their teams and driving performance. Each spoke about the structured review process. They had pipeline reviews, deal reviews, 1 on 1’s, and others. I’d been asked to sit in on some of the reviews, helping the management team improve the results from these, as well as to help improve their coaching abilities. Roughly, 80% of the scheduled reviews were cancelled. Inevitably, something came up forcing the managers (mostly) and the sales people to […]
“Just Give Me The Answers!”
There’s a disturbing trend in developing the capabilities of sales people. It’s the focus on providing answers, rather than developing skills. We see this manifested in all sorts of ways: Increasing focus on scripting–whether it’s written or spoken communications. This is often cloaked in interesting ways, “Tell me the questions I should ask….,” but sales people don’t know what to do with the answers. Managers “telling” people what to do, rather than coaching them in how to figure out what to do. Training focused more on being prescriptive, than developing skills. In truth, too often, these are responses to what […]
Are You Learning Yesterday’s Skills For Tomorrow’s Buyers?
Every time I meet sales enablement and sales executives, I ask, “What are the critical skills you are focusing on training and developing your people on? The answers are varied, but generally fall into very specific, and classic selling skills: Qualifying, questioning, listening, prospecting, objection handling, closing, call planning, deal planning, account planning, time/territory management, establishing rapport, communications styles, and so on. These skills are important, in fact they are table stakes for all professional sales people. But they are yesterday’s skills and insufficient in working with tomorrow’s buyers. Going back to those conversations with sales executives, I usually follow […]