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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
Thinking Of Others, Water Changes Everything!
We’re entering a New Year, many glad to have the past behind us, filled with energy and optimism for the New Year! Most everyone reading this post has been blessed with great fortune. We don’t have to worry about basic things. We have a place to live, we have friends and colleagues, we have food, access to healthcare, and water. We tend to take those for granted, focusing on other things. We don’t have to worry about surviving–living. Yet millions of people have to worry about that every day–surviving. Millions don’t have access to the most basic requirement for survival—potable water. Over […]
Putting Ideas Into Practice!
It’s that time of year. For many organizations, it’s the finish of the old year and the start of a new one. It’s a time when we put so much behind us, developing plans for a new and better year. New goals, new programs, new initiatives, new systems and tools, maybe some new products. It’s a great time, not only for organizations, but for each of us as professionals, to reflect and think about change. What worked in the past 12 months, what didn’t? What skills should we develop to stay at the front of our profession and to more effectively serve […]
Insight, Influence, Value Creation, Trust……
In simplifying our communications, we tend to isolate topics. It’s easier to talk about Constructing Insight just by focusing on that. Or likewise for Influence, Trust, and any number of topics on increasing our ability to connect with our customers. In reality, we can’t isolate these topics, none stands alone, each is required, each strengthens the other. We seek to influence our customers’ decisions, getting them to choose to change and to choose us their partner in moving forward. We’ve seen our efforts to influence and persuade others fail when we push or pitch our solutions. Or we are trying […]
Win/Loss Reviews
Win/Loss reviews are critical to continuous improvement. Do you conduct them? Amazingly, for as much effort as we put into winning or losing a deal, I see too many organizations being very casual about analyzing actual performance and outcomes. I seldom see win reviews conducted. Sometimes I see loss reviews conducted–but most often, it’s not a loss review, it’s a reason code in a CRM system–and most of the time it is price or a product reason. Sometimes I see managers conducting loss reviews, less to learn from what happened, but more to beat up a sales person with, “How […]
Effectiveness Must Precede Efficiency
In our every day rush of trying to get things done (play on words is not intentional), we seek to constantly improve our efficiency. We look for all sorts of time saving devices. Whether it’s the latest gadget, new time management approaches, the latest in tools to automate much of what we do, we seem focused on efficiently done. In the rush to efficiency, we sometimes forget effectiveness. A bad thing efficiently executed is still a bad thing. We’ve just inflicted it on the recipient much faster, and have the potential to re-inflict it just as easily. So all our […]
Sitting With The Problem
Often, both we and our customers seem to rush through the buying process. Sometimes, we both move forward without really understanding the problem we seek to solve. Perhaps the customer has done a lot of research on what they think they want to buy. They’ve formed some opinions, narrowed alternatives to a short list, and are ready to move to a selection and decision. Sometimes, that’s effective. For knowledgeable, educated customers, who have bought frequently, it may work. They know the issues they face very well, they understand the alternatives, pros/cons, and can make a very good decision. Other times, […]