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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
Mistakes New Managers Make
Transitioning from the role of individual contributor to a freshly minted New Manager is fraught with opportunities to make mistakes. In this article, I just want to focus just three things, I’ve seen happen to new managers too often: Failure to recognize their job has changed! The urge to change everything at once. Getting stuck behind a desk! Failure to recognize their job has changed—this is usually the single biggest mistake I see new managers making. Typically, they’ve been very successful as individual contributors, possibly top performers. Too often, in moving to the manager role, they try to do the […]
The First 90 Days–Critical To Management Success
The first 90 days in any job is critical to your success. What you accomplish in your first 90 days sets the pattern for you and the organization over a much longer period. Everyone knows this, unfortunately, too many squander the opportunity to have their greatest impact by acting too soon. There’s this funny thing that happens to someone new into a management or leadership role. There is the urge to take action immediately, to put your stamp on the organization, to bend the organization to your direction. This is almost always a path to failure–both individually and for the […]
Primer For The Newly Appointed Sales Manager
There’s an interesting phenomena that happens with too many newly appointed managers-regardless their level of management, they immediately want to make their mark on the organization, they want to make changes, just to be making changes. I see this with many experienced managers moving into new management jobs, and virtually every first time manager. Paraphrasing my friend Wally Bock, a manager’s job is not to make a mark on the organization or to change things just for the sake of change. The job of the manager is to produce results–through their people. This may not be as fun or as […]
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, All I’m Askin For….
Aretha Franklin had it right, all any of us want is a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I could write a year’s worth of posts on this, but I want to focus on one tiny aspect of R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that’s T-I-M-E. All of us are time poor–everyone has more to do than there are hours in the day. One of the greatest signs of respect, for our people, for our customers, for ourselves, is how we value time. Take some signs of disrespect: We show up for meetings late–it’s a demonstration of our lack of respect for the people we are meeting with, we […]
We Keep Missing Our Forecast! Deals Keep Slipping!
It’s that time of year, everyone’s focused on getting the second quarter done. The year’s half way over, managers are reviewing deals and forecasts. We’re doing all we can to get deals closed, to finish the first half on or above target. It’s a time of great frustration to sales managers. I get in lots of conversations, “The forecast keeps slipping, there’s no predictability, and I don’t know what’s really going to close!” It’s true, you look at the history of deals, the forecast close date keeps moving—always in the wrong direction. You talk to the sales person, they say, […]
Sales/Marketing SLA’s – Are They Really A Sword Of Damocles?
There is a fascinating conversation on the topic of “Should sales and marketing have SLA’s between the two organizations?” Visit Focus.com for some terrific ideas on this topic. I have to admit being torn about this concept. Taken from one perspective, SLA’s are very powerful. The process of establishing and aligning around goals and objectives between organizations and functions is very powerful and critical. Great SLA’s establish clear goals and priorities, define roles and responsibilities, establish common metrics, establish project management approaches, problem management approaches, and rewards. The process of developing SLA’s is great to align the different parties involved […]