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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

Customer Retention, A Rant

By David Brock | March 20, 2012

Business is tough everywhere.  As sales professionals, we struggle to find business and meet our quotas.  Losing business that you had previously won is tragic.  Over the past couple of weeks, a couple of companies that I have done business with have lost mine–perhaps not forever, but as a potential buyer, I will be very cautious about doing business with them again. The first is one of our company’s banks.  We keep accounts in a few banks around the world.  Originally, we established multiple accounts to help make it easier for our people to do business.  Each account is a […]

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“Pissing On The Ashes”

By David Brock | March 20, 2012

My post yesterday stirred some discussion, Stop Spending So Much Time Coaching The Bottom Of The Funnel.  I thought I’d expand on it to clarify my comments.  Annually, I sit in hundreds of deal reviews.  Too often, the focus is at the end of the cycle–we’ve put our offer forward, we’re doing everything we can to win (Funny how we seldom spend a lot of time doing reviews on opportunities that we believe we have won).  In reality, there’s probably not much we can do at this point.  We’ve failed to convince the customer and last minute tactics or shifts in […]

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Stop Spending So Much Time Coaching The Bottom Of The Funnel

By David Brock | March 18, 2012

It’s approaching the end of the month and quarter.  Everywhere I turn, people are focused on closing deals– focused on making the quarterly numbers.  I sit in lot of reviews, managers and sales people are focused on deals at the bottom of the funnel.  “How do we close this deal, what do we have to do to win, how do we get it this month?”  The focus seems to be exclusively at the bottom of the funnel.  It’s as though no other opportunity exists. This month will pass, we’ll enter a new month.  Guess what happens—you’ve got it, the focus […]

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No Room For Farmers!

By David Brock | March 13, 2012

Sales people are often described as Hunters or Farmers.  Hunters have been characterized as chasing after new customers and new opportunities.  Farmers focus on nurturing established accounts, keeping loyal customers, growing the business primarily through servicing the customer and growing the relationship. I’m not sure that model has ever been appropriate, but in today’s world of value creation, the model falls far short of what our customers need and what our own organizations need. Everybody Hunts!  It’s the responsibility of each sales person to constantly develop their territories–whether it’s an industry segment, a geographic region, or a named account, everyone […]

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Coaching–It’s Not About Giving The “Answer”

By David Brock | March 13, 2012

Coaching is critical to improving performance–regardless the role we are in.  Professional athletes rely on coaches to improve their performance, to help them achieve things they hadn’t been able to do before.  Musicians, actors, speakers all rely on coaches.  Listen to their conversations, though.  They are different than we might imagine.  These are people who are top performers, they aren’t looking for “the answer.”  At their level of performance, the answers don’t exist–the coaching ends up being a process of discovery–both on the part of the coachee and the coach.  They learn and grow together. We talk about coaching in […]

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With No Road Map Or GPS, We Lose Our Way

By David Brock | March 11, 2012

Imagine you are in a new city.  You’ve just landed at the airport, you have just enough time to drive to a critical meeting with a customer, but you have no road map or GPS.  Sure you can follow road signs, but sometimes, that’s a little tenuous.  You have to proceed slowly, cautiously.  Sometimes you make a wrong turn and have to retrace some of your steps–all the while, losing precious time.  You worry that you might be late. Clearly, none of us would do that if we had a short amount of time to get to a critical meeting.  […]

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