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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
“Target Close Date” Integrity
Bob Apollo wrote an outstanding post, Where Did That Close Date Come From? He talks about the importance good close dates to forecast integrity. I thought I’d expand on his outstanding thoughts. Nothing destroys pipeline and forecast accuracy more than bad target close dates. I’ve lost count of the number of pipeline reviews where the target close dates were pure wishful thinking. I recall one review about a year ago, where the sales person had slipped the target close date by 30 days 11 times in the past 11 months. When I reviewed his pipeline, I challenged him about the opportunity, […]
Busyness Is Not Productiveness
Somehow a packed calendar/agenda seems to be an indicator of our “success.” We live in a 7/24 world, we have more work than we can manage, and we constantly fill our calendars with activities. It impacts people at all levels. I’ve told this story before, but it bears telling again. About 15 years ago, I was working with a Fortune 100 organization. It was struggling terribly to produce results and grow in a very turbulent market. As I met with people, I notices how busy they were, their calendars were filled from the morning to evening with meetings, many had […]
Customers Aren’t Widgets
I’ve always thought sales is more science than art. I believe selling is a set of disciplined processes, many of which can be “engineered” to optimize our ability to engage the right customers/prospects, with the right conversations, at the right time. Whether it’s a recruiting/onboarding process, talent management/people development, account/territory management, opportunity/deal management, pipeline/forecasting, prospecting, time management, performance management, defining/communicating/delivering value, and on and on; driving performance and more predictable outcomes is a what all modern sales professionals and leaders can achieve. We develop these by with strong, purposeful strategies, based on deep understanding of customers and what is most […]
My Dad
Please forgive a momentary departure from my commentary on the state of business, leadership, sales, marketing, and customers. This post is dedicated to my Dad — and Mom, since they have been inseparable in making my sisters and me who we are. In a couple of weeks they will celebrate their 65th anniversary. Dad’s 92 years old. I wanted to take an opportunity to celebrate he and mom, and to let them know the impact they have and continue to continue to have on me, my sisters, their friends, community–and the world. While I refer to Dad in much of […]
“Are You Happy With Your Current…….”
Why do so many prospecting calls start with the questions, “Are you happy with…….?” Substitute whatever solution category you sell. It could be any variety of sales and marketing automation tools, your banking relationships, your website, your janitorial services. My answer is always, “I’m ecstatic with it!” After all, if I wasn’t happy and it was something important to me, I’d be doing something about it. But a huge number of prospecting calls start with this question. Inevitably, when I proclaim how satisfied I am, the sales person goes silent. The majority are stumped. They struggle with a few other […]
Don’t Confuse Leadership With Titles, Everyone Leads!
Too often, we look at a person’s title, CEO, EVP, SVP, C-Level something or other, Vice President, Director, Manager; confusing the title with leadership. In the best of all worlds people in executive or managerial roles would be great leaders. In reality, that’s not always true, sometimes in my most pessimistic moments, rarely true. We tend to mix the concepts of “manager” and “leader,” where they represent distinctly different behaviors, attitudes, and competencies. Jim Collins defines leadership characteristics of Level 5 leaders as including: Humility, will, ferocious resolve, the tendency to give others credit while assigning blame to themselves. Other […]