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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
Why Don’t We Take The Time To Do Things Right?
It’s oddly ironic, we never seem to take the time to do things right. We don’t do the pre-call research before the call or meeting. We know we have the greatest impact when we have some minimal amount of research complete, but somehow, we don’t take the time. We don’t take the time to personalize our emails. We know we will have far higher open rates and far better receptivity with even the most simple levels of targeting and personalization, yet we don’t take the time to do it. We don’t leverage the sales process. We know the sales process […]
Organizations Are Reflections Of Leaders’ Priorities
I have lots of different conversations with sales executives. They cover any number of issues: “Dave, how do I get our people to use the sales process?” “My people aren’t using the tools we provide them….” “We need to be more customer focused….” “We need to create and communicate our value more effectively…..” “We need people to be more proactive in their territories….” The list goes on. All of them are about executives trying to drive change in the way their organizations and people work. They struggle with making these things happen. At some point in these conversations, I usually […]
Discussing The Role Of Sales Leadership In Driving Performance
Recently, I had the privilege of speaking to Noah Goldman on the Enterprise Sales Podcast about the importance of front line sales managers in maximizing the performance of their teams. Join Noah and I in this discussion as we cover a wide variety of things, including: How do we develop stronger and more diverse career paths for sales professionals? How we help our people achieve their goals, so that we can achieve our goals? The importance of “caring” as a sales leader? What’s different about Millennials? What’s critical for success as a front line sales leader? How should sales leaders maximize […]
Understanding Customer Needs
I was listening to a “discovery call.” It wasn’t much different than any other discovery call I’ve listened to. The sales person was asking the customer about their needs. As I listened to the questions, it struck me, the majority of the questions really weren’t about the customer’s needs but really about the product or solution. They went like this: What are you looking for in a [Insert whatever category you sell–e.g. Sales Automation, Marketing Automation, Financial Systems, Machine Tool, New Building] solution? What features and capabilities are important to you in that solution? And perhaps there was the drill […]
Is Leadership Really About This?
I was stunned reading an article in Fast Company: Five CEOs On The Skills It Takes To Land The Corner Office. The skills they identified were: How to say “No.” How to pitch. How to read financials. How to take criticism. Knowing how the work gets done. It’s amazing there was virtually no mention about effective leadership–that is caring about your people, inspiring them through a great vision, reinforcing it through a great culture, creating ownership and alignment in the organization, and helping each perform at the highest levels possible. Business is about people. No top leader is ever responsible for […]
I’m Really Confused About Account Based Marketing
Account Based Marketing/Selling—“Account Based Everything” is all the rage right now. Some very smart colleagues, including Craig Rosenberg and Matt Heinz are real leaders in helping organizations develop and implement their Account Based Marketing Strategies. But despite all that I read, I’m really confused. Perhaps you can set me straight. Target the right accounts. I understand that we want to identify and target the right accounts. These seem to be the accounts that have the problems that we are expert at solving with our products and solutions. Target the right people within the accounts (personas). I’ve learned that we have […]