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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
What Value Have You Created This Year?
It’s December, we’re all caught up in a frenzy of activity—closing those final deals we need to achieve our goals, preparing for a fast start for next year, then preparing for the Holidays…. Now here I am, adding one more activity to your already over loaded “To Do List.” But I think it’s an important one. Take some time to analyze: “What value have you created this year?” Here are some specific things you should be doing: 1. Look at the top 5-10 deals you won this year. Go back to the customers to see where they are at. Have they achieve the goals […]
The Courage To Commit And Execute
There is never an end to the creativity of marketing and sales professionals in coming up with new ideas or programs. Developing new strategies and new programs is exciting. We get to think about the future, we engage in exciting discussions about new ideas, we are involved in creating and innovating. It’s fun and invigorating. Developing new strategies and programs is seldom a problem. The problem is committing to the execution of the programs. It’s no longer about powerful ideas, but it’s the tough work of making it happen. It’s no longer clean and theoretical, it’s rolling up your sleeves, […]
Observations On Dreamforce 2013
It’s taken me a couple of weeks to sort some of my thoughts on this year’s Dreamforce. In the weeks leading up to Dreamforce, I kept trying to find excuses not to go, normally I avoid going to these types of events. Finally, I decided I’d attend, I steeled myself for crowds, hours of boredom interspersed with a few interesting meetings or sessions. Instead, it became, perhaps the single best professional development experience I’ve been through this year. Let me explain myself with some thoughts in no particular order. 1. First, my compliments to the people at Salesforce.com who are […]
Technology Is Wonderful, But……
I spent much of last week at Dreamforce. Before I go on, if you’ve never experienced it, you should attend. It’s one of the best events, I’ve ever attended. I’ll write more about it later. Dreamforce, like many other user conferences, CES and other trade shows gets a technology geek’s, like me, head spinning! One sees and hears about all sorts of technology–each apparently the answer to every sales/marketing person’s and executive prayers. Install this solution, click here, a few clicks there, and all of a sudden you are over quota. At least that’s the imagery one gets from each […]
Constructing Insight
Thanks to my friend Brian MacIver for his brilliant phrasing on this critical concept on Insight. There’s a terrible misunderstanding on the concept of Insight. Too often, I see organizations caught up in the Insight movement, but focusing only on the front end of the process. Marketing people are busy building messaging programs around our Insights. Sales is impatient for marketing to deliver their polished presentations, then they rehearse diligently to create commercial teaching. Armed with compelling presentations, having rehearsed their spontaneous Whiteboard pitch, they go to customers declaring, “We have some Insights……,” dreaming of the ideal outcome. We know what that […]
“No Decision Made” Is Still A Competitive Loss
Depending on the research you look at, “No Decision Made” has a huge impact on results we produce. The lowest levels I’ve seen with leading market research firms is a little more than 20% of forecast deals end in no decision made. Other reports have it going up from there, some as high as 50% of forecast deals. Recently, I’ve noticed a weird kind of psychology around these types of deals. Yes, we don’t like them, but somehow it isn’t as bad as losing to our competitors. We don’t treat these deals as a loss, we typically don’t go through […]