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
Who Cares About Big Data, Where Are The Big Questions?
This morning, I’m sitting in a series of presentations extolling the value of big data. I get it–kind of. I get that more data has been created in the past 2 years than in the history of mankind. I get that data is everywhere, we can know so much about so many different things. I get there are very powerful tools, enabling us to gather disparate types of data from thousands of sources, slicing and dicing it in ways previously unimaginable. I think if I hear one more statistic, hear any more testimonials about the power of big data, I’ll throw […]
Sales Operations, Serving Sales People—An Interview With Tony Walker
Over the next several months, I’ll be interviewing a number of Sales Operations and Sales Enablement executives. I believe these roles are critical in understanding and driving sales performance. Field sales managers focus on their teams. They want to maximize the performance of each person on the team and of the team, as a whole. They focus on the numbers–is the team performing at a level to achieve their numbers? Sales Operations and Sales Enablement executives view the organization through a different lens. They have the opportunity to look at the sales organization as a whole. They look at all […]
DumbingThings Down Versus Radical Simplification
I’m a great advocate of Radical Simplification. Our worlds are too complex, we seem to keep piling things onto everything we’ve done in the past. New programs, new processes, new systems, new tools, new training. Layer upon layer accumulates, confusing sales people–what do I do? Which strategy should I follow, do I use this approach or another? It goes on and on…… Too often, however, in response to this complexity and all the “tools” that have been put in place to manage complexity, instead of simplification, we dumb things down. We make it so we don’t have to think, analyze, […]
Buying Is A High Risk Job!
In my post, “Solving Our Problems,” Tim Foster reminded me of something the folks at The TAS Group say, “The impact on the customer of a bad buying decision is usually greater than the impact of the lost sale to the sales person.” It’s something few of us think about, but we need to remind ourselves everyday. The risk to the customer in making a bad buying decision can be very high. The risks far exceed what they pay for the product and the revenue we might get. To the customer it might mean: A project failure. The customer is […]
Solving Our Problems
I’ve been having trouble with a sales person. He’s someone I’ve done business with a few times before. It started a few months ago. He sold my wife her last car. He knows her lease is coming to an end in July. A few months ago, he politely called me (wonder why he didn’t call my wife) asking our intentions at the end of the lease. I told him, “She loves the car, she’ll probably buy the current model at the end of her current lease. Why don’t you ask her?” He politely asked, “Would you make sure to call […]
Seeing Things Differently, Seeing Different Things
What do you see in this picture? It’s a very famous–some people see an old woman, others see a young woman. Some of you may just be able to see one image, you’ll have to ask me for clues for the other. Even though I knew there were two different images in this picture, it took me a long time to “find” the old woman (tells you where my mind is at). However hard I stared at the picture, however hard I tried to block the image of the younger woman, I really had difficulty finding the older woman. After […]