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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
“What Did You Sell That For…..?”
I have to start this post with a story. Some years ago, I was the executive assistant to one of the top executives in IBM. We were sitting down for our morning meeting to review the day and our priorities. He had just returned from the office after several days in the field with sales people and customers. I asked him, “How did the visits go?” It was all the excuse he needed to go on a rampage. “I was visiting this sales team and they were really excited about a big deal they had closed. I asked, ‘What did […]
“Sales Hasn’t Changed, We’re Just Leveraging Cool New Tools!”
I read a quote from Graham Hawkins. I started, “Sales hasn’t changed…..” Those quotes suck me into reading further and Grahame made the point that sales has changed profoundly. But I reflected, is this true? I know that buying and buyers have changed. It has become increasingly difficult to reach and engage them. They are incredibly busy doing their own jobs, and often are just trying to survive. Where sellers were important sources of information to buyers, they now have many, far better channels to get information on new solutions, capabilities, and so forth. Where sales would introduce buyers to […]
The Power Of “Ritual Questions”
Recently, I read an article about “Ritual Questions.” It’s a powerful concept–but I think leaders can take the concept much further. As I work with and study great leaders, I’ve noticed they all do something similar. They ask the same questions over and over. The questions are a little different depending on the person and the context, but the underlying core question is always the same. These leaders are obsessive in asking these questions–every person they speak with in the organization, customers, suppliers. There is a consistency in what they ask, the conversations they have over long periods of time. […]
We Get Sales Math Wrong! The Magic Is In The Numerator!
My apologies, I’m doing a series of rants that are something akin to David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks. Instead these posts are about Stupid Sales Management/Marketing/Sales Tricks. Sales and marketing are among the most measured functions around. But having these metrics, knowing what they mean, developing and executing plans to improve performance and knowing what to do about them are not well understood. Too often, we leap to the stupid answer, not to the answers that really turn the dials on performance. Here are some examples, while they may seem laughable, they are real. I’m not smart enough to make […]
Driving “Volume,” Are We Letting Form Triumph Over Substance?
John Gardner’s outstanding book, “EXCELLENCE,” published in 1961 has one line that has stuck with me since I read the book in college, “Do not let form triumph over substance.” I think it’s important to reflect on this as we think about our customer engagement and our scaling strategies. If we consider what customers are saying, customers want, in fact are hungry for substance. They need help achieving their goals. They want sales people who understand them, their businesses, their markets, their competition. They want sales people who can teach them how to improve, who can challenge their thinking, who […]
How Do We Broaden Our Thinking About Our Deal Strategies?
This morning, I was conducting a deal review with a very experienced sales person. It was like many other reviews and the sales person was falling into the same trap that I see replicated too many times with too many sales people. This trap is deceptive, seemingly it narrows our focus on what the customer is trying to achieve and how we respond, but too often, it limits our ability to compete and differentiate ourselves. In this review, the sales person said, “there are two driving issues, all we have to do is address those and we win the deal.” […]