Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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 Am I Interested In Selling,” Mitch Little
Preface: Mitch Little is a close friend and “sparring partner.” We often get into discussions and debates about the future of selling and how to drive high performance. (I guess sparring is overstated, he and I are almost always in wild agreement). Mitch should know, as Senior Vice President, Worldwide Client Engagement at Microchip, he ran one of the highest performing organizations I’ve seen. He is passionate about everything in selling and engaging customers. As a demonstration of that passion, some years ago, he wrote “Shiftability, Creating Sustainable Competitive Advantage In Selling.” Here’s Mitch’s take: Why did I get interested […]
“Why I Love Selling” Wolrad Claudy
Preface: Wolrad Claudy is a great friend and client. I first met him years ago when he ran global sales for Tekelec (acquired by Oracle). He’s one of the most fascinating sales leaders I’ve worked with. Since Tekelec, he has been involved in a number of technology start-ups, has developed a specialized fund, providing seed capital to some start-ups. And, on the side, he has a winery. Here’s Wolrad, I love his creative approach in answering my question. My friend, Dave Brock challenged me to explore, “why I’m obsessed with selling.’ First, I asked Chat GPT the question. Here is […]
“Why I’m So Interested In Selling,” Maria Boulden/Gartner
Preface: Maria Boulden is one of my closest friends. I suspect much is based on our love of really bad puns. But most of it is how deeply I respect her as a leader. She is currently Vice President of Executive Partner Sales at Gartner. Prior to that, she ran one of the largest segments at Dupont, responsible for billions in annual revenue. Here’s Maria: “I graduated with a degree in chemical engineering with a chemistry minor. And I started my career with a chemical company doing the things you would expect a chemical engineer to do…research, development, manufacturing, operations […]
“Why I’m Interested In Selling” Eric Anderson
Preface: Eric Anderson is my brother-in-law. He’s the “cool guy” in the family. We started hanging out in college, he went into the Peace Corps in Kenya, then came home, riding a motorcycle from Nairobi, up the Nile, and across Europe. He’s always been involved in extreme sports, racing and motorcycles. First as a driver (winning lots of races like the Baja 1000). Then he moved to the business side of things, running sales in various motorsports companies, founded the Motorcycle Safety Council, started a helmet company and several others. Today, he runs a consulting company, helping some of the […]
Who Should Be Buying?
We tend to spend the bulk of our time responding to people who are looking to buy. They’ve gone through all the tough work of identifying they need to change. They have gone through the work of defining the problem, defining what they want to achieve, getting funding, identifying the risks, looking for solutions…. And then they talk to us. We identify them because they are hitting on our websites, downloading white papers and we reach out to them saying, “We have the best solutions in the world, can we talk…..?” We send them emails and dials, connect with them […]
Do You Suffer From “Selling Bad Breath”
“Selling Bad Breath” repulses the people we are trying to reach. Somehow when we open our mouths or send an email or do an outreach, all it accomplishes is driving our prospects and customers away. No amount of “mouthwash” disguises selling bad breath. Prospects and customers can always sniff it out, regardless how we try to cover it up. What is Selling Bad Breath? (Hold your noses as you read…..) All these are selfish and self centered. It is all about them and has little to do with the customer. Then there are those that are thinly disguised as being […]