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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

The Courage To Admit You Are Wrong

By David Brock | October 2, 2009

I’m continuing my barnstorming tour of Ireland and meeting with Irish Technology Executives.  Yesterday I was hosted by the very gracious people at the NSC Campus in Cork.  I had the privilege of sharing the podium with another inspiring CEO–Pat Phelan of MaxRoam. Pat’s presentation of the MaxRoam story was fascinating.  I was really struck by Pat’s description of having to completely change the direction of MaxRoam early in their formation.  At formation, the team had a strategy of establishing the MaxRoam brands and products around the world.  He and his team pursued those strategies aggressively and he continued to […]

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Intensity, Clarity, and Purposefulness

By David Brock | October 1, 2009

This week, I have the privilege of meeting with a number of Ireland’s leading technology executives, thanks to the hard work of Niall Devitt and Donagh Kiernan.  Yesterday, I had the privilege to share the podium with two outstanding CEO’s, Kevin O’Leary of Qumas, and Paddy Holahan of Newbay Software.  Each spoke of building their companies and entering the global markets.  While they are in different businesses and have very different strategies, I was struck by some common themes that served as the foundation to their success. The first thing that struck me was the absolute clarity of who they, […]

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The New Efficiency–With Less, Do More ???

By David Brock | September 30, 2009

I was struck by a letter from Steve Ballmer yesterday.  It was entitled, the New Efficiency.  I agree with many of the thoughts he expresses, particularly the notion of “The New Normal.”  However, in his article he goes on to talk about the concept of “with less, do more.”  (There is some subtle wordsmithing trying to say the concept is different than “doing more with less,” though I really couldn’t follow the article. Regardless of how you position it, the thinking of with less doing more or doing more with less, has the potential of making us blind to new opportunities, […]

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We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know

By David Brock | September 25, 2009

As consultative, solutions, customer-focused sales professionals, we know that we are supposed to probe our customer’s needs, problems and challenges.  Doing this is the mark of any good sales professional. Probing our customers, understanding their problems, quantifying and qualifying their needs is critical to proposing solutions to their issues.  Customers appreciate sales professionals who provide value based and business justified solutions to their problems. But what happens when the customer doesn’t know that they have problems, or doesn’t recognize  opportunities?  What happens when they don’t know?  No amount of good questioning and probing will get the customer to know what […]

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What Do I Talk To Them About?

By David Brock | September 24, 2009

Just got off a call with some experienced sales people.  We are starting an initiative in contacting current and past customers, hopefully to discover and pursue new opportunities.  I sensed some apprehension in the meeting, finally I paused to ask them, “It seems like you have some concerns about what we are doing?”  There was that pause, which on the phone seems like forever, when one of the sales people finally said, “I’m OK with calling these customers up, but what do I talk to them about?  What should I be presenting, what should I be pitching, what should I […]

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Sales Productivity — What If We Changed The Way We Look At The Problem?

By David Brock | September 22, 2009

Everyday, I speak with sales executives about the issues of sales productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency.  For any sales executive it’s a critical issue, something they are constantly seeking to improve. All the executives I speak with are bright, successful people.  They constantly are looking at their sales processes, the skills of their people, the tools their people use, and other things to get the highest levels of performance out of their sales people.  They are fine tuning, trying to find an edge, a few percent productivity improvement here or there.  They are looking to reduce sales cycle times, improve win […]

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