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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 About Quality?
As I peruse my feeds with insights from guru’s, I see all sorts of advice about increasing our outreach. Leveraging tools, ChatGPT, social channels. My various inboxes are filled with with offers for “more.” I am offered lists of thousands of prospects. We are inundated with data showing declining response rates, the solution to these is always “more.” What took 400-500 outreaches a few years ago, takes 1200-1500 today, and next year probably will be over 2500. As I sit in pipeline reviews, almost universally, the coaching is, “You need more,” followed by demands to 3X, 4X, 9X their pipelines. […]
What Are You Looking For In A Candidate?
Clients and colleagues frequently ask my opinion of people they are considering hiring. It’s often a request, “Dave, what do you think of each of these candidates? Who would you hire?” And the requests are accompanied with resumes, each extolling the fantastic accomplishments the candidate has achieved through their career. When asked this, I always reply, “What are you looking for?” The responses are always the same, “I want a high performer for this role…….” The roles vary, I’m asked my opinion on CRO Candidates, VPs, managers, Account Managers, and others. While I never respond with my knee jerk reaction, […]
“What Would You Do For Free, All Day Long?”
This question was posed in an email I received recently. It struck me, for a number of reasons. People who know me well, sometimes ask, “Dave, why do your work so hard! You certainly don’t need the money, but you continue to be one of the busiest people I know. What causes you to keep it up? Why don’t you take more time off?” The response has been the same over all the years people have asked that question. It’s always been this, “I get up every morning and do my hobby. I have the privilege of working with some […]
Are Your Managers “A Players?”
This is a bit of a tough post for many readers who are leaders. It forces them to reflect on your own capabilities and those of the management teams they lead. A key question, “When reflecting on your own capabilities, and those of the managers on your team, are you ‘A Players?’” Be honest with yourself, if you aren’t you can develop, more later. Why is this such an important question? The answer is pretty simple, in maximizing the performance of their teams, leaders must be top performers, themselves. If they aren’t, then their ability to drive the highest levels […]
Speaking About PIPs……..
Yeah, yeah, I know you are thinking, “What a downer Dave! Can’t you write about something more inspiring like plummeting win rates….?” I don’t know if it’s the time of year, you know a kind of “out with the bad” mindset, or a reflection of something else, but I’ve been involved in a number of discussion about PIPs—Performance Improvement Plans. Virtually all of us have been exposed to these in some way. We’ve been the subject of PIPs, we’ve inflicted them on our people, or we’ve commiserated with colleagues going through the process. And 99% of the PIP processes I’ve […]
“The 4 Hour Work Week!”
No, I’m not doing a review of Tim Ferris’ “The 4 Hour Work Week,” 17 years after it’s original publication. But if you haven’t read it, it’s a fascinating read. I’m imagining the end game of all the productivity and efficiency hacks I see filling my feeds. My feeds are filled with expert advice about how we become much more efficient, how we get more done in the same amount of time or less. For years, there have been hints, tips, technologies. How we can launch 1000s of “hyper personalized emails” in 15 minutes or less. How we leverage dialers […]