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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
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 […]
Sales Process—Did You Develop It In A Dark Room?
There was an interesting comment by Mohamed Saad at the Future Selling Institute LinkedIn Group. Mohamed raised an outstanding point about “Sales processes being defined in a closed room, away from the sales people…” His comment really resonated with me. Too often, I see organizations making real mistakes in developing their sales processes. Some years ago, a very large client of mine had developed a sales process. Since it was a “process,” the process experts in the company had to take charge. They did a lot of analysis, they did talk to sales people, but they went into a back […]
If Our People Fail, We Have Failed As Managers
In our Future Selling Institute Office Hours last Friday, my friend, Jonathan Farrington, made a comment in a discussion about coaching. He said, as managers, if our people fail, we have failed as managers. It’s an important statement that deserves much more in the way of discussion. As managers, our job is to maximize the performance of our organizations and each individual within the organization. We do this through a number of mechanisms, including: We have strategies and tactics in place that clearly position us within our target markets and customers. We keep them current. We have processes, tools, training, […]
Isn’t Social Networking About Connecting With People?
I received an intriguing invitation to “connect” today. Best described, I was asked to connect with a “Thing,” Not a person. This thing had a relatively normal first name, but then a very gimmicky “phrase” as a last name. Curious, I looked the person up at LinkedIn. He went by the same name. I went to his website, likewise, he identified himself the same way. I had no sense of the person I was connecting with. I felt I was connecting with a “phrase,” not a real human being. Nothing in his site or profile gave me any indication of who […]
Why I Love Lazy Sales People!
I love lazy sales people! Actually, let me clarify, I love lazy sales people who consistently achieve their goals and objectives. Every organization has one or two of them, we know how to recognize them. They’re the folks that never seem to be in a hurry, they seem to have time on their hands. When management announces a new initiative, they probably whine and complain—but just the appropriate amount. They may occasionally blow off internal meetings, they may not do all the reporting that’s asked of them, they may do the minimum to skate by. They certainly never volunteer for […]
Sales Coaching, Dirty Secrets Or Misunderstanding What Coaching Is About?
I was interested in reading the Harvard Business Review post, The Dirty Secret Of Effective Sales Coaching. It’s an interesting article with many good point and you should read it. However, I think the authors present a very narrow view of the manager’s job and the goals of effective coaching. Many of the conclusions are pretty obvious, eliciting almost a “Duhhh” response. If you think about it, “coaching the middle” has a huge return. It should be obvious, there are more people in the middle, so every percent of performance improvement you get from this population has a great impact […]