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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
Do Great Sales People Make Great Sales Managers?
Do great sales people make great sales managers? This is a debate that never seems to end, I’ve written about it before, over the past few weeks, I don’t know how many posts I read about the topic. There is a real problem, too many times, we take great sales people and move them into sales management roles. Some succeed, some fail. Move anyone into any management job, some succeed, some fail. The real issues are: Do we know what skills, capabilities, experiences, and mentality do we want in a sales manager? Do we have a profile of what the ideal […]
An Innovative Approach To Sales Training?
The web provides endless amusement in understanding new approaches to selling. I recently found the following post in a sales training discussion blog I participate in. It was posted as “Huge Favor:” Hi! My name is Melanie and I need a huge favor. I just started a new sales job providing (Some product from a big company). As part of my requirements for graduating from training I need 10 referrals to let me call them to present the offer. You do not have to buy anything at all. (Of course, you can if you want to and I can get you […]
Sales, The Toughest, Most Visible Job In A Company!
Recently, I’ve been engaged in a number of discussions about how tough a job sales is. The issues usually involve: “We have the highest risk job in the company, if we don’t hit our numbers, we’re gone!” Or it is: “Our performance is visible to everyone in the company, they see whether we make our numbers or not, no one else has that visibility.” Or it is: “Without us, nothing happens, we are the most critical and criticized function in the organization?” I worry about these claims–complaints. In the best case, they are ill-informed, in the worst they are arrogant […]
On Sales Process And Other Unnatural Acts!
Last night I participated in a fascinating discussion on engaging sales people. The conversation was one of our bimonthly Sales Smack’s. If you are interested in vigorous discussion, you ought to join these, I always learn a lot, both from what’s said, and how the discussion stimulates my thinking. All the information can be found at our LinkedIn Group. The conversation started with the topic, how do we get sales people more engaged? There was discussion about sales people being lazy, discussion about Sales Process and how it restricts creativity and innovation. One of the most interesting parts of the conversation […]
Does Competition Beat You, Or Are You Beating Yourself?
I love competing and I love winning! Watching the Super Bowl was great, two great teams who left everything on the field. No this is not a post about what we can learn from the Super Bowl, but the Saints and the Colts are good examples of great competition. Competing against a great competitor is great, it raises the level of play, it forces us to compete more strongly–bringing our best game to the situation. It helps our customers, strong competition should bring better solutions. Even if we lose, strong competition helps us, we learn from losing, we learn where […]
Sales Process 2010, Are You Positioned To Perform?
Yes, I’m on that soapbox again. There have been a number of research reports released, all highlighting the decline in sales performance. CSO Insights, 2009 Sales Optimization report is one that you should look at. It’s disappointing, but not surprising. My friend, Dave Stein wrote an interesting perspective, Declining Sales Performance: Have You Had Enough Yet? In many ways, the decline is understandable, though not excusable. We are in the midst of overwhelming and rapid change, it’s difficult just keeping our noses above the water. Customers are changing the way they buy, social media is making information (accurate or not, […]