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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
I Can Tell You The Quality Of A Sales Organization Just By……
My good friend, Keenan, started a fascinating conversation on LinkedIn. His post was a simple picture. I made a comment, “Keenan, I’ll see you and raise you, I can tell the quality of the organization by sitting in on one team pipeline or forecast review 😁” Mark Hunter added, “David Brock Drop the mic and I agree with you David 100%….and we can tell the culture of the organization by listening to how management responds.” Alice Heiman added, “David Brock I’ll see you and raise you (I don’t play cards and I have no idea what I’m talking about on […]
The One Thing That Matters Most
Not long ago, I was speaking to a group of executives. Someone asked, “What is the single skill you look for in hiring a seller?” I suspect they were thinking that I’d respond with something like, prospecting, closing, managing deals, building pipeline, relationship building, or any number of other important skills. My response surprised them, “Curiosity is the single most important skill, not only for sellers but for sales leaders.” When you look at any of those other skills, underneath all of them is some aspect of curiosity. “Which prospects deserve the most investment of my time?” “How can I […]
Why I Advised A Seller To Recommend Her Competitor
Yesterday, I had a fascinating conversation with an outstanding salesperson. She wanted to brainstorm her approach to a negotiation that had hit a wall. It was a multimillion-dollar contract renewal. The client had been a loyal customer for years, but now they were pressuring her for massive price decreases. I asked, “What is their rationale for the decrease?” She replied, “I don’t know. They think that because they are a large customer, they deserve an adjustment. But what they want is crazy! Their consumption of our product is skyrocketing, but they are being irrational.” As we continued, she said, “They […]
Saving Time Is The Wrong Goal For AI
Virtually all the “hot tips, prompt cheats,” and other insights into AI focus on saving time. We want AI to do the work for us, so we can better spend our time elsewhere. Ironically, when I ask people how they are now spending their time, they shrug their shoulders and say, “More of the same….” We are almost exclusively focused on one metric: efficiency. We have tools that draft emails in seconds, summarize hour-long meetings in bullet points, and generate endless reports. The idea is that if AI can do the work for us, we save minutes here and there, […]
Why We Settle (And How To Stop)
You want to pursue excellence. You know you should. You’ve read the books, attended the training, made the commitments. So why don’t you? This isn’t a question about knowledge. You know what to do. It’s not about capability. You can do it. The question is why capable people, who genuinely want to be excellent, keep choosing to settle. What causes, this, what’s happening? It’s all in your mind. You’re fighting your own wiring. Neuroscience research shows that human beings are wired to move toward what feels good now and away from what feels painful. Excellence requires doing hard things, they […]
A “Salesperson,” The Reputation We Have Earned
My friend, Lori Richardson, published a post on a debate she had with her dentist on salespeople. Describing salespeople, he made the statement, “Yea, those folks that lie and rip people off.” While that phrasing may be extreme, unfortunately we hear things like that every day. I’ve been a seller or deeply involved in selling virtually all my career, and I cringe with 99% of the stuff that ends up in my Inbox, LI invitations, and others. I never answer a call from a number I don’t recognize. I don’t want to have anything to do with the majority of […]