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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

Zero-Based Sales Planning

By David Brock | December 31, 2018

As we start a new year, perhaps your plans are locked in. But perhaps there is an opportunity to rethink or, even to reinvent what we think about the sales function and how we sell. So much of what we do is done just because, “That’s the way we’ve always done things.” We think we may have evolved, but in reality we’ve just applied a layer of technology and updated language and jargon. For example rather than being customer focused and consultative, we are insight driven. But fundamentally, we are doing the things we have always done, but perhaps at […]

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On Consistency

By David Brock | December 28, 2018

I don’t know why, but we never talk about consistency. Consistency is about what we do every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Consistency is a key foundation for learning and improvement. We can’t develop new skills unless we apply them day after day, week after week….. Somehow consistency seems to be anathema to how we work and behave. We are event driven. We have the new program, we try it out for a few days or weeks, until we are bored (Ironically, we do this even for things that work). Then we […]

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What We Think Of Our Customers Colors Our Engagement

By David Brock | December 27, 2018

Someone called seeking coaching on a specific deal.  He had fallen into traps which blinded him in moving forward with a winning strategy. He started the conversation with, “The key decisionmaker is really a jerk!  He’s power hungry, his people want to do something with us, they’ve presented compelling arguments, but he doesn’t want to go forward…….   They are losing so much opportunity, if they only they would implement our system……” A few moments later in the conversation, I learned, “…..He’s relatively new in his role, he’s turning everything upside down, his past experience is with our competitor, so he’s […]

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“10 Years Of Experience…..”

By David Brock | December 26, 2018

I spend a fair amount of time helping clients hire managers and sale people.  Usually, I’m in the final round of interviews.  I look at their CV’s and LinkedIn profiles.  Usually, they are talking about their years of experience in selling.  “I’ve been selling complex solutions for 10, 15, 20…..years.” As I look at their job histories, I see tenures of 1-2 years, every once in a while maybe they become “old timers” with 3 years in the same role. You can probably guess what I’m going to say, but I have to say it.  As I look at their […]

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The “Real Cost” Of A Salesperson

By David Brock | December 19, 2018

What would you think of a front line manufacturing manager failing to address problems that consistently cost millions of dollars in scrap and rework (not to mention customer sat problems because of missed deliveries)?  Or an engineering manager that missed product launches that caused millions in lost revenue? Most people would say these are real problems and if they happened repeatedly, these managers would be fired! Yet, within sales, this practice is common, yet people, that is leaders seem not to care about it, instead the squander millions in mis-hires or in failing to retain top talent.  Stated differently, I’ve […]

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Sales Training And The “Forgetting Curve”

By David Brock | December 19, 2018

Every year, billions are spent in sales training.  Yet all the data shows over 80% of what is taught is forgotten within 90 days.  As a result, what really is happening is that every year we are throwing away billions on sales training. But it’s worse than that.  The billions spent represents spending in buying, developing, and delivering training.  It doesn’t even include the time/opportunity cost of the people, upon whom we inflict sales training. What do we do about it? First, let me provide a quick tutorial on the “forgetting curve.” One of my favorite blog sites is the […]

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