Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
On Personal Branding
I’m amused by all the articles and talk about personal branding. But, it’s always fashionable to develop new names for age-old concepts. To be fair, sometimes these label shifts bring these principles back to our attention. To some degree, the concepts of personal branding and reputation are–or should be—synonymous. I’m not sure in much of modern personal branding, they are. It seems much of the discussion focuses on building visibility and building broad networks. The trick in sustaining your personal brand isn’t in how big your network is or how visible you are, but rather in delivering on your brand […]
The Customer Doesn’t Care About Your Number!
It happens to all of us. We need to make our number. Quarter end is approaching, we need a deal to close to make our numbers. Recently, I was doing a deal review with a sales person needing a specific deal to make her quarter happen. She’s a great sales person, and as with great sales people very goal driven. We started the deal review with her statement, “I need to make this deal happen this quarter….” Naturally, her manager and I agreed. But as we did the deal review, the focus on her needs became really distracting. All the […]
What About Seller Personas?
By now, hopefully, everyone knows the importance and power of Buyer Personas. Understanding who our buyers are, what drives them, how they are measured, the key issues they face, and all sorts of other things enables us to connect and engage them more effectively. We can focus our content and our discussions in ways that are most impactful and meaningful to them. We can talk to them about the things they are most likely to be interested in in their “language.” We can create and communicate value in terms that directly impact their success. Personas have shifted the way we […]
Bits And Pieces — August 20, 2016
Here are some of the things on my mind this week: Current Reading: Team of Teams, New Rules of Engagement For A Complex World, McChrystal, Collins, Silverman, Fussell: I believe managing/dealing with complexity is one of the most profound issues facing leaders of all types in today’s world. Team of Teams provides and outstanding starting point looking at why complexity is so important, why our current methods and models for dealing with complicated fail in looking at complexity. I expected the book to have simply a “Special Forces” take on nimbleness, adaptability, and so forth, instead it takes a far […]
If You Can’t Write, You Can’t Sell
In the past few days, I’ve been embroiled in conversations about grammar and spelling. I read an discussion about “Should I hire a sales person with poor writing skills.” I was astounded by the majority of responses. Many people had the view, “If they can sell, who cares!” The conversations about grammar ran along similar lines, “It’s all about ideas and closing business, who cares about grammar and spelling?” Some of you, will think this post is about writing, grammar, and spelling—it isn’t. But writing skills, grammar, spelling are critical skills for sales people–if you can’t write clearly, if you […]
Account Based Everything
I’m somewhat amazed, but pleasantly so, about the sudden discovery of “Account Based Selling,” or as the great folks at TOPO refer to it, Account Based Everything. It’s important for reasons beyond the “account based” focus, but at the same time, I have to chuckle at the apparent novelty of the concept. My very first sales job, I was part of a team that sold to a single account–that was in the late 70’s. There were 5 of us on the team, I was the most Junior. We were responsible for driving over $30M a year in the account (And […]