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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
“Why Do You Care So Much?”
This post is primarily written for me. It’s for me to explore my thinking and to get greater clarity. Normally, I would not publish something so introspective, but I think I’m asking for help. I’d really appreciate your feedback and ideas. It’s been something that’s been bothering me for some time, but I haven’t been able to articulate it. Regular readers know I go through alternating phases of being very optimistic about the future of our profession and the hope that I carry for the impact we can have with our customers, our companies, our peers, and our communities. At […]
Understanding Our Customers
Last week, I had the privilege of speaking with Howard Dover’s Digital Prospecting Class at UTD. I had no prepared materials, it was a Q&A about how to connect with prospects more effectively. It was such a fun conversation, we focused on how we increase our effectiveness and impact through deeper understanding of our customers/prospects. Sam Coit summed it up well with the comment, “Understanding how different roles think and feel allows us to better cater our approach and offer the most possible value.” The class is changing their prospecting approach, focusing first on understanding their prospects–not talking at all […]
When Will We Learn? Or Do We Even Care?
This morning, I was greeted with a couple of things. One is the norm, I get inundated with mindless prospecting emails every day. Usually a couple of dozen make it through my spam filters, There are dozens in the spam buckets. I scroll through those quickly, spamming each of those. But I know tomorrow, dozens more will find their way into my inbox. Then I saw a post in LinkedIn, it highlighted some data (let’s assume it’s true). It suggests there are close to 360 Billion emails sent every day! Doing some quick search, I find there are 4-5 billion […]
“How Will You Be Making A Decision On This….”
Recently, working with a client, we were talking about a major change initiative. I asked the question, “How will you be making a decision on how do implement this initiative?” There was an awkward silence, the CEO eventually said, “I don’t know…… What should I be doing? What should I be looking at? Who should I be involving in the decision?… ” She reeled off a number of questions and concerns all around making decisions on this initiative. While we were working on a specific project and talking about a major transformation initiative, all of a sudden it struck me […]
Trust And Trustworthiness In An AI Dominated World
We know trust and trustworthiness are critical in our ability to engage prospects and customers. It’s a foundation of our ability to develop and maintain relationships. We know what happens when, inadvertently or purposefully, we betray that trust. There are other concepts intermingled with trust and trustworthiness. Integrity, consistency, meeting commitments, knowledge, honesty, values and value, caring are all elements of establishing and maintaining trust. In a world in which AI role in buying/selling becomes increasingly important; in a world where we exploit LLMs to drive our ability to engage customers and for them to engage us, where do trust […]
Opportunity Math……
I’m constantly amazed as I look at performance of organizations. I think, “Why do we revel in achieving our quotas and scaling goals, when we could be doing so much more?” If we achieve our growth/revenue goals, we think we are doing well. Too often, however, we could/should be doing much better. We are underperforming the potential. Think of what it would mean to our customers, our own performance, our companies, shareholders, if we started to more effectively address the potential? Let’s look at some “opportunity” math. First, let’s look at individual performance improvement areas–then let’s start looking at the […]