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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
The Search For The Silver Bullet
Human history is filled with stories and myths about the search for something “easy.” It goes back to the very beginning of human-kind, all our religious texts–regardless of religion are filled with stories of both the search for miracles and miracles created. In grade school, many of us learned about Ponce de Leon’s search in the “New World” for the Fountain of Youth. Every day, regardless of channel, we are pummeled with endless messages about miracle cures, magic elixirs, get rich quick schemes, lose fat/gain fitness. Most offered in 3 convenient payments, all ending in $__9.99. Billions, perhaps trillions are […]
When Scripts And Tools Aren’t Enough
Sales enablement continues to push the boundaries in improving the capabilities of sales professionals. New tools, training, processes, capabilities all focus on helping sales people be more impactful, relevant, timely–as well as more efficient and effective. Analytics help us identify customers with a higher propensity to buy. Prescriptive approaches help guide us down a path that maximizes success (do this, don’t do that). Playbooks tell us what to do, with who, and how to do it. There’s a never ending set of tools that enable us to research and better understand the companies and people we are engaging. But what […]
What If You Couldn’t Discount?
I always worry starting a post with, “When I first started selling…..” I fear that I sound like one of those grizzled veterans living in the past. But when I first started selling, the company did something somewhat unique. The price was the price—period, exclamation point. The quantity purchased didn’t matter, the unit price was the same. It didn’t matter if you were the largest most important customer or the smallest, the price was the same. To make things worse, our products, while very good, seldom had the latest greatest technology, we were also usually much more expensive than our […]
Are We Getting Better As Sales Professionals?
Some of you know that one of my biggest vices is high performance vehicles. My garages, at various times, have been filled with cool motorcycles, old American muscle cars, and occasionally an exotic vehicle. Recently, I indulged in buying a new car. It has some awesome technologies, all oriented to making my driving experience better and easier. The car is fantastic, it almost parks itself (actually in Europe it would). It has cameras and sensors that guide me into the parking spot and forces me to stop just shy of the curb. When I drive, it keeps me from drifting outside […]
Is Some Revenue Better Than No Revenue?
The knee jerk reaction to the question, “Is some revenue better than no revenue,” is probably a resounding, Duuuuhhhhhh, well why wouldn’t it be??! But let me provide a little context. I just had an exchange with a reader commenting on a post I wrote a couple of years ago, We Can’t Ignore Poor Performers! One of his points about poor performers was, “at least they are producing some revenue,” implying, “Why rock the boat?” His view is actually not that uncommon. Too many managers tend to accept what they know is bad performance, with the excuse of “At least […]
Stop Wasting Money On Marketing Automation, Personas, And Content Marketing!
Recently, I lamented about the challenge I face with my email Inbox in Your Marketing Is Driving Me Away! I spoke of the ever increasing volume of email messages that are simply irrelevant, undifferentiated, or poorly executed. And these are the marketing emails from well established organizations, sent by marketing and sales professionals. Coincidentally, I read a research report on The State Of Email Marketing 2015. Click on the link, the blog post provides an interesting summary. The report was the result of a survey of over 1800 email marketers, around the world. There’s a lot of interesting information, but one […]