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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
New Ideas Don’t Have To Be “New”
We constantly struggle with innovation and insight, whether it’s for our own organization or our work with customers. To be honest, I think we make innovation and insight far too complicated. I don’t know how many “innovation” session I see organizations conducting. Usually, it’s a group of people sitting in a circle. Perhaps they are surrounded by white boards, there are pads of different color “Post-Its.” There may be a facilitator taking the group through a number of “mind-freeing” exercises. Inevitably, they struggle. The groups stare at each other, toss out some ideas, but struggle with really new ideas. Likewise, […]
Stop Reading (Just) Sales Books!
Reading is important to our professional development and growth (not to mention the scientific evidence of how it improves our cognitive capabilities). Far too few business and sales professional actively read as part of their personal and professional growth. (Perhaps, that’s part of the reason we consistently see the stunningly poor data on results.) Every week, however, it’s gratifying to talk to sales people and executives who’ve made reading part of their daily professional development. It’s not just blogs or trade magazines, they are actively reading books, doing deep dives into their own professional development. I love learning what they […]
The Power Of “Yes, And…” In Coaching
Too few managers actively coach. CSO Insights Data indicates the majority of manager spend less than 2 hours a week coaching—total! Too often, what managers consider as coaching is actually very destructive. It’s manifested in several ways: The manager is constantly in tell mode. The manager thinks he knows the situation better than the salesperson, rather than listening, understanding, and exploring; the manager starts telling. They dictate actions the sales person should take. “Go do this, then do that, then try this, and get back to me so I can tell you what to do next. Each of us knows […]
Effectiveness And Efficiency Are Not Natural, But They Are Learnable
Every organization continues to focus on how to drive the highest levels of performance. Broadly, there are two primary areas that drive performance: Effectiveness And Efficiency. Effectiveness focuses on “Are we doing the right things with the right people at the right time?” A lot of sales training focuses on improving our effectiveness. For example, are we engaging our customers in a way that’s relevant and impactful? Are we chasing the right opportunities, qualifying them, executing our sales process well, are we maximizing our impact in each interaction with the customer, are we maximizing our share of account, are we […]
Sales Performance, It’s Not “Them”
Not long ago, I received a call from a frustrated executive. I listened as he went through a litany of complaints about the sales team. You can probably guess them: They weren’t hitting their numbers, in fact they were missing by a long way. They weren’t making quota. Their win rates were abysmal. Sales cycles were way too long. Forecasts were terrible. There was too much discounting. There was a fair amount of turnover in the organization. …..and the list went on…. I let him get everything off his chest, after he ran out of steam, I suggested, “Maybe it […]
Sales Agility And Adaptability
A few of us have been having a conversation about whether adaptability and agility are important in sales. I think we are in uniform agreement it is important, however, my initial reaction was, “Why are we even asking this question, isn’t it a foundation to selling?” As I reflected on the issue, I get why it’s an important conversation. It seem so much of “contemporary” sales practice is going in the opposite direction. Between rigidly applied sales processes, scripting, and “predictable” approaches to selling, much of the ability to be agile has been taken out of selling. The lack skill/competency […]