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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
Sales, Art, Science, Craft?
The article I wrote, Moving From Selling As An Art To Selling As A Science, has stirred up a lot of reaction in the various venues in which it’s appeared. There have been various comments, mostly supportive. Many suggest, I think correctly, that sales is a blend of art and science. Robert Racine added the great insight that professional selling is a blend of art, craft, and science. However, there continues to be a lot of flawed reasoning in these discussions. (Mostly outside the direct comments to the referenced post.) Many argue the science side, but are focused on the […]
Driving Change
We all struggle with change. Most of the time it’s impatience with those around us who aren’t changing. it may be our people, our customers, others in our organization. They struggle with change, they resist it, they get confused. Change is always tough, it threatens us, it puts us in unfamiliar situations. We may be uncomfortable, we may not know what to do or how to do it. We want to revert to what we know, we take comfort in the familiar–even though we know these things may be holding us back. Too often we forget that at the root […]
Are Skills More Important Than Experience?
I was reading an article from yet another guru—my apologies, I’m really getting tired of guru’s—with the premise, Skills are more important than experience. To add credibility to his statement, he quoted Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, but really took one statement out of an interview, removing the context that supported what she was saying. There’s some sense to that statement. Having great skills is very important (at least skills relevant to the role you are seeking to fill). His argument, is that deep experience in an area doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the skills to perform. And that a […]
Clean Water Changes Everything
Those who have followed me for some time know this time of year, I shift my focus to a pet project: Charity:Water, more specifically providing clean water to people in villages I will probably never see. I’ve been running annual campaigns to raise money for about 4 years. These, along with donating a part of the profits from the sales of Sales Manager Survival Guide, have enabled us to raise over $40K, providing water to 1000’s of people in Africa and Southeast Asia. Once again, I’m asking you to contribute to Making A Difference 2017/2018. If only for a moment, […]
Moving From Selling As An Art To Selling As A Science
We seem to be approaching or passing the tipping point where leading sales practitioners view successful selling as a disciplined, focused, engineered approach to engaging and creating value for customers. Stated differently, moving more toward selling as a science. I hope the days of the sales person being the most gregarious person, always quick with a joke or story, slapping people on the back, are long past. I hope we no longer live by the mantra, “When the going gets tough, the tough take a customer to lunch/golf.” But, as with many swings of the pendulum, I worry that the […]
What’s The Difference Between “A” Players And Others? It’s All In The Details
I was having a conversation with a colleague about the differences between top performers and everyone else. The conversation caused me to reflect on discussions I’ve had with 1000’s of sales people over the past year. Clearly, there are differences in sales people and their approaches. The skills and competencies vary by market/industry, customer base, solutions, organizational strategies/priorities, geography/culture and many other things. Various assessments will tell you there are commonalities in top performers in certain behaviors, attitudes. For example, the ability to take rejection, money motivation, risk tolerance, and so forth. We see certain commonalities in those indicators across […]