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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
Hanging Out Where Our Customers Hang Out
I recently saw an infographic from the Brighton School Of Business entitled, “Do You have What It Takes To Become A CEO?” There was a lot of interesting data there, but several one category captured me. They wanted to assess the social media activity of the Fortune 500 CEO’s. Their conclusion was, “today’s top CEOs aren’t very active on social media.” It followed with the following: 28% have a LinkedIn profile (They didn’t assess how active that 28% was in LinkedIn, for example, do they update their status, are they active on groups, etc.). 7% are on Facebook. 6% are Twitter. […]
Curiosity, Critical For Sales And Leadership
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it is a critical competency for top performing sales people and sales leaders. Oddly, enough, I’ve seldom have seen anyone write about it, I seldom see it listed as a skill we look for in recruiting. It’s curiosity that drives a sales person to wander around their accounts and territories–building relationships, finding out what’s on the minds of customers, finding opportunities they may be missing, areas to improve. It’s curiosity that drives the sales person (and manager) to find out what drives people, what their dreams and aspirations are, what frustrates them, what […]
Stop Wasting Your Money On Sales Training!
This title will draw several immediate reactions. There’s probably a round of cheering from those who’ve been subjected to bad sales training programs. Simultaneously, there are a number who will be saying, “This is absolute heresy, how can you say this?” Both reactions are probably right on target. Every year, billions are spent on various types of sales training. Some of it is internally developed, focused on product skills or other topics; some is purchased from vendors of very high quality programs. But too often, the training doesn’t achieve the expected goals. Of course there are some poorly designed and executed training […]
The Call To Action
Today, I received an email. It was interesting, someone had seen some posts I’d written. The topic of those posts was aligned with what something they were doing. The note simply said, “Read your article on …. Do help us with …..” and had a link. I followed the link, and it didn’t really tell me what to do or how I could help—I was interested enough to follow the link. What they were doing was interesting, but I didn’t know what to do next–and it wasn’t interesting or provocative enough for me to take the time to figure it out. It’s […]
Focus On High Performance Marketing And Sales–A Discussion On LeadSpace Radio
This summer, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Steve Gershik on Leadspace Radio. We had a wide ranging discussion on sales, marketing and business, covering topics like creativity, innovation, problem solving, and change. We spoke of the importance of process, constant simplification, and the challenges we all face in becoming prisoners of our own experiences. I hope you enjoy listening to this 26 minute interview as much as I enjoyed the discussion with Steve.
The PIP—Performance Improvement Plan
Three letters, PIP, strike fear into the hearts of sales people and managers alike. It’s called different things, the PIP, the Performance Improvement Plan, the Measured Mile…… Typically, it’s the final straw in dealing with poor performers. Frankly, I think they are a pure waste of time and we should get rid of them—at least the way we currently use them! I can hear HR VP’s moaning, Corporate Counsels thinking “Has this guy every heard of a lawsuit? Along with the cheering from lots of managers? And a lot of people who are on a performance improvement plan or have been […]