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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 Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing — Part 5
Whew, we are getting to the end of this series! Thanks to those of you who have hung in and contributed. I’ll be packaging this as an eBook, give me a couple of weeks, but email me if you want a copy. We’ve gone through the philosophies and principles underlying the Toyota Production System, (TPS), in the past 4 posts of this series. If you haven’t read them, here are the links: What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. In this post I’d like to focus on some of the challenges we face […]
Compressing The Sales Cycle
There’s an interesting conversation going on in LinkedIn. It starts with the question, “Is reducing the time between customer meetings the only way to compress the sales cycle?” This focuses on what we call wall/calendar time (look at the clock or calendar on the wall, reduce time between meetings–shorten sales cycle). It is a way to reduce sales cycle, but it’s probably the least controllable way to do this. In reality, I think there are far better ways to reduce sales cycle, while also increasing the probability of winning. First, you have to chase the right deals! Nothing increases sales […]
3 Questions
I’ve had the good fortune to spend a lot of time with some inspirational leaders. Over time, I’ve noticed some common patterns in every conversation they have with people in their organization, customers, suppliers, even within their business communities. While there are variations, I call it the “3 questions.” The three questions have almost magical power: They have the ability to communicate and reinforce the top priority of the leader. They have the ability to help the leader learn about things that impact their top priority. They have the ability to help the person the leader is speaking with think […]
What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing — Part 4
We’re almost through the 14 principles of lean manufacturing that underlie the Toyota Production System (TPS). If you haven’t read the three preceding articles, you may find them helpful: What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing, Part 2, and Part 3. So far we’ve looked at the Philosophy of TPS, which provides the foundation for everything. It’s interesting, while these 4 philosophies are the foundation for the Toyota Production System and lean manufacturing, they have nothing do do with manufacturing. They are sound business practices. Supporting the 4 philosophies are the 14 principles. We’ve completed the first 9, today we’ll […]
What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing — Part 3
Ir you haven’t had a chance to read the first two articles in this series, take a moment to skim them, What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing and What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing–Part 2. This post follows on those. If you have been following, I’ve been using the Toyota Production System (TPS) as the foundation for this discussion. It is the foundation form much of our thinking on lean manufacturing. In the last post, I got through the first 4 of the 14 principles in TPS. I’ll continue with Principle 5. Principle 5: Build a culture […]
Can We Self Coach
I posed a question on LinkedIn, “Can we self coach?” The responses are interesting and, for the most part, thoughtful. Paul Lanigan made a comment that neatly sums up my thinking: “The whole idea of a coach is to shine a light on what we don’t see.” I think this is an important concept and why any high performer must actively seek coaching from their manager and even mentoring from people they respect. There’s a huge amount high performers can and should be doing for themselves. They should always be seeking to learn and improve, but in a systematic way. […]