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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
Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks! (Are The Pups’ Learning As Well?)
Continually learning and improving our skills is critical, regardless of how “seasoned” we may be. It’s been a real joy through my career to have the opportunity to learn from my experiences, and more importantly from that of others. In virtually every engagement, we are privileged to learn from some of the smartest people in business, sales, and marketing–our clients. One of the reasons I am so active in social media (beyond the ego gratification of folks like you reading my ramblings), is that I’ve met so many great people and been able to learn from them. Today, I had […]
Making Progress, What Do We Talk About Next?
So you’ve finally qualified a deal, you have something real to compete for, an opportunity to win. Usually, you start planning what you need to do, make some calls, find out what they want, prepare a proposal, present your solution, close the deal. Simple. In reality it seems things drag on and on and on and….. We blame the customer, they aren’t moving forward. In some cases, that’s true, but too often, I think much of the blame rests with us–the sales person. When I sit down and review deals with people, the strategies seem unfocused. Some sales calls where […]
What Impressions Are You Creating?
My friend Bob Thompson of CustomerThink posed an interesting question the other day. Bob’s really an authority on customer experience and tends to take a broader view of customer experience than most–and I think he is right. We talk a lot about the buying experience and the customer experience, as though those are the most critical things to consider and measure as we look at the overall topic of customer experience. As intense and focused as they may be, I think we miss a huge amount by just discussing these. While not elegant, we need to be thinking about the impressions both […]
Are False Positives Killing Your Sales?
A False Positive is a term used in medicine. Imagine some sort of test that comes back with results saying you have a life threatening condition, but in reality you don’t. The results of the test were mistaken, giving a False Positive. If your doctor doesn’t know the results are mistaken, that a False Positive has occurred, the doctor could prescribe treatments for a condition you don’t have. They can be quite painful and may create a whole series of problems that can be devastating. In medicine, researchers and doctors are particularly concerned about False Positives. Often, the reason multiple […]
Preaching To The Choir
Prepare yourself for a rant, it’s been one of those mornings! As a preface, I’m proud of being a sales professional. I aspire to create value for my customers in every exchange. I strive to learn and improve, despite the years of experience and greying hair. But then I get mornings like this, I’ve been besieged by a half dozen of the most ill-conceived, poorly executed, manipulative prospecting calls one can imagine. They make me ashamed to be a sales person. It started in the middle of the night. My mobile beeped with a text. “Dave, how r u doing? Haven’t […]
Sales Competence, How Do We Know?
Yeah, I know, I know. Many readers will react to this title with responses like, “Isn’t Sales Competence an oxymoron? Isn’t that something like Military Intelligence?” But if we want to maximize sales performance across our organizations, it’s critical that we have a model that identifies critical competencies for the sales organization. Without this, we have no framework for performance management, coaching, development or continuous improvement. In the absence of a sales competence framework or model, often we evaluate and track the wrong things. Too often, we track things like quota performance. But that doesn’t necessarily tell you whether the sales person is […]