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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
Who Is The Customer?
Some of you are scratching your heads. What’s Dave getting into? Aren’t customers the people that buy our stuff? Aren’t they the prospects we go after to convince to buy our stuff? It’s actually a tougher question than it appears to be. Answering the question requires deep insight into what it is we do better than anyone else in the world, and who needs what we do. Answering the question also demands that we identify who we shouldn’t be selling to. But clearly identifying the customer is critical in focusing our sales and marketing where we have the greatest insights, […]
The “C” Words In Sales
Get your minds out of the gutters! My mom reads these posts! I’ve been avoiding this in my blog for some time, but I’ve broken down and decided to write about it. The “C” words I’m talking about are Commission and Compensation. A few weeks ago, a colleague and I were commiserating about the topic. Seems we both are always asked about, “What’s the best commission plan, how should I pay my sales people, should I look at a 70/30 split, what about 100% commission” and on and on and…… We know people want answers and help, but it’s one […]
Shallowness And Networking!
It’s clear we’re in a frenzy of networking and connecting. There seems to be a rush to establish connections, friends, whatever. People are reaching out, connecting, racking up the numbers. They’re using every channel possible–LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google +, and more. But then there’s this odd phenomena. Somehow, I’m under the mistaken opinion the purpose of networking and connecting is to form some sort of relationship. It needn’t be close, but it’s a relationship. We build some sort of informal bond, develop some level of trust……… But instead, networking seems to be more about, list generation, lead gen, and other things–but little […]
Are You Boring, Or Simply Irrelevant?
Last week, a couple of my friends looked at a couple of different, but parallel issues. Jim Keenan published You’re Boring. I struggled through the post, took me a couple cups of coffee to stay awake—just kidding Jim! Dave Stein posed a question about Age Discrimination on Google +. (It’s hard being a 26 year old, with Grey hair, people mistakenly think I’m much older.) The root of both these issues is “Are You Relevant?” Too often, people confuse the wrong things. Using the latest, coolest technology. Following the latest trends, whether music, appearance, tools. Being seen at the “right […]
Buyer Verified Forecasts
Imagine a world of accurate sales forecasts. Imagine prospects relieving sales people of the need to do forecasts. Monthly, they send a report to the sales manager, “Your guys are working with us on this deal. We’re going to make a decision and place an order in 75 days, right now we view the probability of the deal going to you as 73% and we expect the PO to be $1,553946.17 (roughly).” Hang on, no I’m not smoking anything, I am dreaming a little. We’ll probably never reach the day of buyer verified forecasts, but we can dramatically improve the […]
No Free Lunch, Investing In Sales And Marketing
My friend, Anthony Iannarino wrote an interesting post, A Cheap Sales Force Is An Expensive Problem. He hits on a critical issue and mistake–one that I see too many entrepreneurs and small business owners make, often with devastating results. Too many entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t have an appreciation for the value of sales and marketing, probably because they don’t understand the functions. All the investments made in product development, manufacturing, services, infrastructure are wasted if the company fails to acquire paying customers! It’s kind of like buying a Ferrari, but then equipping it with the cheapest possible tires […]