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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
Hunting? Farming? Funting?
Just as a humorous preface, I wanted to write about our mistaken impressions of Hunting and Farming. I wanted to suggest both co-exist, both in new and current accounts. So I was looking at how I might combine the concepts into one word. At first I came up with Harming—which I discarded for very obvious reasons. That left me with with the concept of Funting. I’m not totally satisfied with this, and am open to suggestions. The concepts of hunting and farming have classically been applied to the acquisition of new customer logos and how we manage those customers/logos once […]
What’s Easy Isn’t Always Good For Us!
The human brain is wired for convenience, speed, efficiency and how to get the most done for the least effort. Individually and organizationally we are drawn to short cuts, hacks. We leverage technologies, including AI/LLMs to offload the mundane and make us more efficient. We discount/cutting our prices, because it’s easier than helping customer understand our value co-creation. We continue to do meaningless email/voice/social outreach, because it’s easier than figuring out what customers really care about and how to engage them impactfully. We wait for our customers to engage us, if they do, at the very end of the buying […]
Are LLMs “Dumbing Us Down?”
I leverage a variety of AI tools, predominantly LLMs, constantly throughout the day. As I look at how I use the tools and how many in selling and business leadership use these same tools, I’m starting to see sharp contrasts with the way too many others are using them. There are many using these tools as “thought partners.” They use the tools to evaluate/debate strategies, model different competitive scenarios, challenge assumptions they may be making about certain opportunities. As I look at their prompts, I see fascinating questions, challenges, and a give and take. And they use these exchanges, less […]
“As Long As The Outcome Is Achieved…..”
A thoughtful LinkedIn Post (I know, I know, it’s a rarity), addressed the tendency of managers to “over control” the way sellers work. Too often, we see rigid processes and managers demanding compliance, and constant/dysfunctional micromanagement. Yet every situation is different, in the best sellers agilely adapt what they do to achieve the goals. But a number of commenters thought, “As long as the outcome is achieve, who cares about how you do it?” The focus was purely on the outcome. In essence, this argument is “The end justifies the means…..” Setting aside any ethical other considerations, there are huge […]
Things That Haven’t Changed…..
We live in a world of constant disruption and change. It can be distracting as we struggle to understand and respond, or as we try to figure out how to leverage the disruption to better achieve our goals. We become focused on the change, the technologies, the new approaches/ideas, tools. We tend to be attracted to “bright shiny objects,” or the miracle cures, or the “secrets to my success.” And this is natural and, sometimes, helpful. At the same time, we tend to forget, there are things that remain constant through time. Things that fundamentally don’t change. When we forget […]
Questions/Answers, Engaging Customers In Verbal Ping-Pong
I listen to a lot of sales calls. Recordings of client sellers in calls/meetings. Sometimes webcasts where someone is talking about call strategies and going through role plays. This week, it was on creating urgency with questions. So much of it begins to look like a game of pint pong. Question….Answer Ask…Respond Query….Reply Inquire…Response Probe….Answer (though I seldom see this level of questioning) Ask…Explain Back…Forth Ping…Pong As I watch these discussions, I start to feel my head turning slightly to the questioner, then to the responder, then back to the questioner, then back…… Kind of like a ping pong game […]