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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
Should Sales People Be On Quota?
Yesterday, I was being interviewed by Pat Helmer for a podcast (it will be published in a few weeks.) He asked a question, “Should sales people be on quota?” For a fraction of a second, I was stunned. How could anyone even ask the question? Not having a quota was something that was absolutely inconceivable to me. Pat went on to describe that many sales managers he talks to have other goals/metrics they use–certain numbers of activities, other measures. (which when you look at it is really a form of quota). Later in the day, I got an email from […]
Buyers Get Smarter Through The Buying Cycle
Andy Paul and I exchanged emails on my post The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle And Selling. He had written a similar post [See Here] His post reminded me of something too many sales people overlook in their sales strategies. Buyers Get Smarter Through The Buying Cycle. If we are doing our job engaging with the customer, we are teaching them–helping them understand new approaches to achieving their goals and getting them all hot and lathered to change. They engage in assessing the opportunity, determining their needs/requirements, evaluating alternatives.. Through this process, they engage more people in their organization. Their points of […]
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle In Selling—Revisited
It seems my post on The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle In Selling brought out some closeted physicists. There has been a healthy exchange of emails and comments with physics related jokes. Something like, “Two physicists walked into a bar….” I’ve even gotten emails from Professors of Physics at esteemed universities with great comments and more jokes. So I thought this very narrow group of my audience, might get weekend enjoyment from the following cartoon at XKCD LOCATION SHARING Readers who remember their physics are rolling on the floor laughing right now. For everyone else, be patient with me having a little […]
The “Appification” Of Sales And Marketing
It seems to me the best business to start these days is an App business focused on sales or marketing. I wrote about the Proliferation Of Marketing/Sales Apps. In the past year the number of Marketing Technology Apps have gone from 947 to 1876, in 43 different marketing technology categories. Sales Automation, Customer Experience and related apps are going through a similar explosion, with dozens of new apps appearing every month. Sales and Marketing Executives have a huge appetite for these technology solutions, spending $10’s of billions each year on these (just the apps, not implementation, integration, etc.). But it makes […]
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle And Selling
Many of you know that I was actually trained as a Theoretical Physicist, but somehow found myself going to the Dark Side—Sales. But, I keep going back to my roots in physics, it sometimes helps me understand phenomena we encounter in Sales. One of the more well known areas of physics is the Uncertainty Principle, originated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927. Basically, it dealt with the quantum mechanics and the difficulty of simultaneously measuring speed and momentum of particles. We often confuse the Uncertainty Principle with the Observer Effect—which is really what I want to talk about, but thought you’d […]
Water, Water Everywhere, But Not A Bit To Drink…….
No this is not another plea for donations to my Charity:Water campaign (though if you want, click on the link). I saw a fascinating graphic and post at the Marketing Technologies Site. You should definitely read it. The headline, is they have identified 1876 Marketing Technology Vendors in 43 Categories. It’s up from 947 Vendors just a year ago! And I would guess that number is already inaccurate, because it’s 24 hours out of date! Furthermore, add to what is likely to be a similar number of Sales/CRM/Sales Enablement Tools, Customer Experience Management, other productivity tools (remember Word/Excel)….. We sales […]