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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
Solving Today’s Problems Doesn’t Get You To Tomorrow
A few days ago, my friend Don Perkins had a wonderful comment on my post, Are You Selling To Where Your Customer Is Going To Be? He asked if CXO’s are really focused 2 years ahead, or do they focus on solving the “crisis du jour?” The right response is that, in reality, they must do both—they must focus on where the organization needs to be and they must also address today’s problems. Easier said than done. Too often the day to day crises and sheer momentum causes us to focus our time on solving today’s problems and fighting today’s […]
Who Owns The Customer?
Earlier this week, I attended Selling Power’s Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. It’s a great conference, Gerhard, his team, and the speakers did a fantastic job! During one of the breaks i had a conversation that left me a little confused. I thought I’d bring the conversation to the blog and get your views on the issue. The issue is in today’s Sales 2.0 world, who owns the customer? By this, I mean, who has ultimate responsibility for managing the customer relationship, growing and supporting it. While, many would say “the company” owns it, or propose the CEO or the […]
Are You Selling To Where Your Customer Is Going To Be?
Wayne Gretsky attributed part of his greatness as a hockey player to, “always skating to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is.” His idea is a good thing for us to think about as sales professionals. Too often, as sales people, I think we focus too much on where the customer is now, what are their current problems, what are their needs, how do we present something that gets them to buy now. We struggle at selling–the project may not be a priority, funds aren’t allocated, we get close, but no sale. I think much […]
Why Didn’t You Buy From Me?
“Why Didn’t You Buy From Me?” This six and a half word sentence is probably the most difficult, but one of the most important questions a sales person can ever ask. It’s a question we tend to avoid asking because it is an admission of failure — tough for any of us. However, not asking it is a bigger failure, but we tend not to recognize this. I’m constantly amazed by the lengths people will go through to avoid asking this question. We lose an order, too often, we just put a “reason code” in the CRM system and do […]
Performance Management — The Measured Mile
In my last post, I talked about the importance for managers manage performance in their organizations, not ignoring performance issues. In this post, I want to go into establishing the performance improvement plan and putting someone on a “measured mile.” The performance improvement plan is emotionally tough for everyone involved—the sales manager, the poor performing sales person, even others in the organization. It’s important, however, that everyone enters this with the same goal in mind, the objective of the performance improvement plan is a successful outcome. Let me repeat this, the objective of the performance improvement plan is a successful […]
Performance Management–Are You Looking The Other Way?
At times, sales managers have to put under performers on the proverbial “measured mile.” That’s when the sales person has a period of time to meet specific goals, improve performance, or face the potential of losing their job. Typically, the manager and sales person sit down, they establish specific goals, a plan of action, and a schedule under which the sales person can redeem himself, getting back on target. The manager and sales person establish what each will do to ensure a successful outcome. At least that’s the theory of the performance improvement plan. Most often, however, it never comes […]