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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
Why I Won’t Respond To Your Email!
I get at least a couple 100 emails a day (not including the SPAM). A lot of them are trying to sell me on something. Most I quickly delete, but some are interesting and intriguing. Some of the interesting emails are offers to explore a collaboration, people interested in getting me to do something for/with them, some outright trying to sell me something–but still interesting. However interesting many are, I won’t respond to them–I don’t delete them, I keep a file of “bad email marketing examples.” Here’s why I won’t respond to those emails. They are addressed, “Hi,” or “Hi […]
Weighted Pipelines And Forecasts
I have to admit, I’ve never been able to figure out the value or meaning of the weighted pipeline and forecast. It’s one of those things that is embedded in every CRM system, it’s one of those things that I see in all sorts of reports, but I have yet to figure out what it means. I suppose the weighted pipeline is supposed to be some sort of indicator of overall pipeline health, but most processes for assessing probability are hugely flawed. Take a look at virtually every CRM system and the default methodology for determining probability. It’s based on where we are in […]
Confusion About Metrics
I recently read an article from someone I respect, “Revenue Is Not A Metric.” To be honest, I was confused–as I read the article, there was some clarification–“revenue is a result….” As I usually do, when I see something that’s a little confusing, I go to the dictionary to see if I may possibly misunderstand the way a term is being used. I went to Wikipedia to read up on performance metrics: “Developing performance metrics usually follows a process of: 1. Establishing critical processes/customer requirements 2. Identifying specific, quantifiable outputs of work 3. Establishing targets against which results can be scored” […]
Dealing With Ambiguity
Things are so much easier when they are black or white, when there is a “right answer” to every question or issue we face. Unfortunately, in the real world of buying and selling, there are no right answers, there is no clear direction–either for us in selling or for our customers. One of the most important skills of high performing sales people is the ability to deal with ambiguity–both in how they work and in engaging customers, facilitating their buying process. I get calls and emails every day; I sit in meetings where people are looking for help and direction, […]
Don’t Get Distracted By The Numbers
As sales professionals, we’re obsessed with the “numbers.” Where are we year to date, what’s the forecast, what’s the pipeline look like, what are the activity levels, how many qualified leads do we have, and on and on and on. We’re constantly measuring, tweaking, analyzing, measuring. We look at numbers from all type of views–increasingly we leverage analytics to give us different perspectives and insights to the numbers. There’s no doubt, numbers are important. But all they are is numbers. The numbers help us identify issues, opportunities and problems. They are yardsticks to measure performance. Numbers don’t solve problems or […]
Closing The Gap–Achieving Our Goals!
We’re well into the second half now. The first half is behind us, many are breathing a sigh of relief. Did you make your numbers? Did you hit your targets? Have you achieved your Year To Date Quota? “What are you talking about Dave?” Some of you might be wondering, what point I’m trying to make. My point is top performers always focus on making the numbers–that is they want to make their goals this month, this quarter, and for the year. Every once in a while, even top performers might miss a monthly goal. As they move forward, they […]