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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 Enablement Versus The Front Line Sales Manager
Mike Kunkle is leading an important discussion about a new trend in Sales Enablement. Mike identifies the issue: “I’ve been reading Sales Enablement leadership job descriptions lately. I find it concerning how many paint the enabler as responsible for working directly with reps to improve their performance. Not as an occasional field support effort, or a reality check on what’s happening out there, but as a main tenet of the role. And the front line managers are doing what, exactly” Like Mike, I’m seeing the same trend. Increasingly, sales enablement organizations are being staffed up and given the responsibility to […]
Automation: Are We Empowering Human Interaction Or Displacing It?
The sales and marketing technology along with the social networking/selling technologies represent a huge amount of the changes that are driving sales and marketing. They relieve us of many of the tasks that used to take lots of time, enabling us to focus that time on engaging customers and colleagues. They help us in better understanding our customers, markets, and what’s happening, so that we can engage customers with more relevant insights on more timely bases. They enable us to extend our reach, beyond our local geographies to the global community. They help us create greater value for our customers, […]
Account Strategies, How Important Are We To The Customer?
Account Based Everything has been the rage of the past couple of years. The principles of ABE are outstanding–focused on further tailoring and personalization of our marketing and sales approaches to the specific needs and priorities of the customer–both the enterprise and individual (actually these are great principles for any customer outreach). Inevitably, we start putting these accounts into our account programs: Major Accounts, Key Accounts, Strategic Accounts, Corporate Accounts, Global Strategic Accounts, Super Duper Really Humongous Very Special Accounts (OK, I invented that one). We do these things because the customer is important to us. We want to retain […]
Top Sales Enablement Priorities
Rightfully, sales enablement gets a lot of attention these days. Dozens of articles and studies talk about the importance of sales enablement in developing the capabilities of sales people. Organizations like the Sales Enablement Society is bringing the discussion and frameworks for sales enablement to the front and center of our collective attentions. The priorities cover a lot of areas: On boarding Learning and development Talent management Content Systems, tools, processes ….and more With the exception of articles by a small number of people including Mike Kunkle and Tamara Schenk, there is one critical area that’s notably absent. What about […]
We Are The Very Best Company To Do These Things ……..
Quickly, go to your email and look at the last 10 unsolicited prospecting emails you’ve received, I’ll wait until you come back……. Back already? Let me guess, every single one of those emails started with something similar to: “We are a world leading provider of …….” “We are the best supplier of….” “Our products/services are use by these great companies….” “People interested in these issues [fill in whatever you choose] are always interested in learning about our solutions…” “Our products will enable you to [insert whatever you want, including world peace, world hunger, and losing weight]” Alternatively, it may be […]
I’m Ashamed Of Our Government
Forgive me for diverting from my normal commentary on business, leadership, sales, marketing, and customer experience. I hardly feel qualified to speak about politics. Yet, I’m a proud American Citizen, and feel I can no longer remain silent. I’m ashamed of our government. It’s a horrible thing for anyone to express about their government–particularly when they are elected officials. But I’m sick and tired of the pettiness, bullying, taunting, selfish, and childish behaviors we see in our government. It’s not just the Executive Office, but also, of our senators, congress people, and many of the bureaucrats in all parts of […]