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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
It’s Not “Integrated Sales And Marketing,” It’s “Interleaved Sales And Marketing”
I’ve been pretty tough on content marketers and marketing in a couple of my recent posts, “Are They At 57% Yet,” and “Opportunities We Are Blind To.” Beyond that, there are hundreds of articles and discussions on Integrated Sales And Marketing. The discussions are powerful, the walls we erect between the functions, the fingers we point at each other are diminishing, albeit slowly. We are realizing we have shared goals and must work together to optimize our abilities to attract, communicate, engage, and connect with our customers. There have been dramatic shifts in the type and relevance of content we create. All […]
Should We Be Rethinking The Role Of SDR’s?
Recently, I’ve been on a bit of a rampage, rethinking how we identify and pursue opportunities. It started in “Are They At 57% Yet,” and continued with “Opportunities We Are Blind To.” In this post, I’m continuing on the same theme, but trying to look at how we deploy people to actually find these opportunities. I’m a terrific fan of the concept of SDR’s. It’s critical to build specialized skill to have high impact first engagements with customers. In most organizations, prospecting and finding enough opportunities is a critical problem, so applying specialized skills at the very front end of […]
You Can’t Go It Alone On Complex Deals!
You have a huge deal, it’s the biggest one you’ve ever had, it’s huge for your company. You and your company may not have done many of these types of deals before. Or the complexity of the deal will require you to do some special things (no I’m not talking about pricing). Inevitably, it’s complex, there are lots of twist and turns about the deal. You struggle to understand the buying team and engage with them. There’s tough competition. Whatever the situation, it’s not a slam dunk. It’s not a standard situation where you can pitch your product, create a […]
The Opportunities We Are Blind To
Content marketing is going to save the world! Customers will let their fingers do the digital walking, SEO, PPC and other techniques will enable those customers to find us, our marketing automation tools will capture and nurture those customers through their quest to learn, SDR’s will intercept them at just the right point and then we magically have a qualified opportunity. At least that’s what many would have you believe. If it produces enough qualified deals to achieve your growth goals, then I suppose, it’s not a bad strategy. But I wonder about all the opportunities we miss, all the […]
Power Is Not What You Think It Is
We have a lot of ideas about power and influence. Too often, they are wrong and misguided. Perhaps driven by watching terrible movies or TV shows, bad stereotypes, or bad examples set by those perceived to be “in power.” Non managers, new managers, and bad managers tend to have very naïve or bad views of power. The latter group are probably clueless and never will care, so this is directed to the former two and others who want to think about it differently. To be honest, I’ve learned this over a long time, with some painful experience. Growing up, I […]
Change Your Job Every 3 Years?
I read a fascinating article in Fast Company, You Should Plan On Switching Your Job Every 3 Years For The Rest Of Your Life. One point leapt out to me, job hoppers (at least high performance job hoppers) are fast learners and much more adaptable. The argument is, to be able to fit in, job hoppers have a very fast learning curve, quickly learning how to fit in, contribute and have an impact. It’s an intriguing and powerful thought. On reflection, however, I realized, no job and few companies can afford to stay the same for 3 years. Stated differently, your […]