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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
Any Idiot Can Be A LinkedIn LION!
….. And Most Are! Before I go further, I need to offer a disclaimer and apology to a very small number of friends and colleagues who are LinkedIn LIONs. Having said that, I do wonder why they choose to put themselves in such bad company. But I will be making some tough statements about LinkedIn LIONs. I don’t mean to insult those friends who are LIONs, but I don’t want to clutter this post with continued apologies to you. LinkedIn is tremendously powerful in helping each of us better connect with each other, as well as discover important new contacts. […]
Charity:Water, We Do Have An Impact!
Some of you may think you are having a “Deja-vu” experience or that I’m repeating myself. Don’t worry, both are true! I kicked off this campaign with a post on December 20. For those of you who have followed this blog for some time, you know this is the time of year I ask you for money. For the past 3 years, I’ve sponsored campaigns through Charity:Water to provide wells and potable drinking water to 10’s of thousands of people in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. You’ve been very generous in your support and in your giving. Clearly, I didn’t […]
Top Performers: Obsessive Learning And Relentless Execution
At one point, I wanted to get better at golf (it’s hard to be worse than I am). I started reading a lot of “How To” books, watching videos, and taking lessons. As I stood, club in hand, looking down at the ball, I struggled to remember: “Keep your head down, bend your knees, keep evenly balanced, keep your back straight, shoulders level, reach straight back, keep your arm straight, watch your elbow……” I’d always end up twisted like a pretzel, the ball would go further to the left or right than in front of me. Sometimes, I think people […]
Attrition Is A Leadership Problem
Some time ago, I wrote, A Frightening Look At The “Cost Of Selling.” It has been one of the most widely read posts I’ve ever written, with 10’s of thousands of views and 100’s of tweets. The post generated lots of discussion and comments about the challenges of recruiting, hiring, onboarding, performance management, development planning. There’s been lots of discussion about attrition–voluntary and involuntary. Along with this has been some discussion of millennials–saying, “They will always be moving to other jobs…..” Many in comments and in other articles take this as a fact, but don’t look at the underlying issues […]
Presence
Often when we think about “Presence,” we think about a person’s bearing or how they present themselves. There are some people who seem to have tremendous presence. When they walk into a room, when the participate in a conversation, all focus shifts to them. There’s a lot to be said for this kind of presence–but I think most of the time it has to do with a different sense of presence. The part of presence that we don’t seem to pay much attention to, is “being present.” That is being totally focused on what’s happening now, being in the moment, […]
Too Busy To Worry About The Customer Experience
Recently, I wrote, “‘Simplifying The Way We Work,’ But What About The Customer?” It provoked some interesting discussion, including a great comment from Gary Hart: “…do you think many organizations are trapped in the misconception that bottom-line-centric improves customer centricity and that price trumps service?” Certainly, the bottom-line is critical to our success. Without focusing on profitability, we can’t continue to invest in growth or survive. It’s a fundamental for all businesses. But customer centricity and profitability aren’t conflicting goals. In fact our most loyal customers are probably our most profitable customers. I do think many business executives, mistakenly, put profit […]