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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
Do Your Customers Feel Heard?
We are driven to pitch our products and solutions. Our questioning and discovery strategies each have an agenda, we seek answers that enable us to pitch. We have presentations focusing on us, our products, our companies and how great we are. We have closing strategies focused on getting the order. Somehow, our customers are lost in the process. They don’t feel heard. What does this mean? It’s not just about what’s happening in their business—their problems, their opportunities, their challenges. It’s not just about how they navigate their buying process. It’s not just about learning how others are addressing similar […]
The Tenure Crisis……
Preface: My apologies, this is very long. But it needs to be. The tenure crisis is not a simple issue. The impact of the tenure crisis robs all of us of opportunity. There is so much potential–both revenue growth, organizational and individual growth. We need to pay attention to, not adopt “work arounds.” We have a tenure crisis. It’s devastating to company growth and performance, it’s devastating to our individual growth, development and performance. Yet I’m stunned by the number of people, when confronted with it, shrug their shoulders, saying, “Get over it, that’s the way of work these days……” […]
The Way Things Are, The Way Things Might Be (Seduced By The Sounds Of Our Own Voices)
Every day I think we have reached bottom with the level of stupid advice I see in my social feeds. Every day, I’m surprised that we can find new depths of stupidity. Sadly, too much of this is from smart people who should know better. Yet, somehow they are seduced by the sounds of their own voices reinforced by countless, “100% man…… Such great insight….. Wow brilliant….!” Today, I saw something from a very smart individual, someone who should know better. The net of his broetry said, “Average leadership tenures are 17 months…. To protect yourself get a side gig…. […]
How Much Time Are You Spending In The Field, With Your People?
It’s SKO time of the year. In the meetings, I’ve been doing an informal survey of leaders, at all levels. I’ve been asking, “How much time are you spending in the field working with your people?” The answers, while not surprising are disappointing. So far, it looks like the average is somewhere around 15-20%. I ask, “How are you spending your time?” As you would expect, their days are filled with internal meetings, reporting, and, sometimes coaching their people. I ask, “Would you like to spend more time in the field, with your people?” Too often, I get hemming and […]
We Know The Answers, But Do We Know What They Mean?
We have all sorts of technologies that give us the “answers.” ChatGPT can answer just about any question imaginable (As long as the data is before April 2023). Where years ago, we struggled to find answers, now they are abundant. But we have some new challenges, “Do we understand what the answers mean and can we apply them to the specific situation?” ‘Do we understand which answer we might choose or recommend, and why we should make those choices?” “Do we have answers that are meaningful and impactful to our customers, and do they get it?” I sit in all […]
Are We Leveraging AI To Its Greatest Potential?
My feeds are filled with all sorts of stuff on Generative AI and LLMs. “All sorts of “”Experts” offer miracle cures and prompts to “give us the answers, doing all the work for us.” All of what I see from sellers leveraging ChatGPT and similar tools are well written, most are unimpressive. All these outreaches are similarly ambiguous and non specific, hence usually irrelevant. As I look at how too many sellers are using Generative AI, I wonder if we are using it to its full potential? Or are we misusing them, tragically? Before I dive into this discussion, I […]