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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 You Trust Your People Enough To Let Them Succeed?
File this under “Practice What You Preach.” Over the past few months, I’ve been involved with a small organization trying to achieve something very important. It’s a very tough challenge with some degree of personal and professional risk to the team. I’ve been advising them—perhaps more than advising them because of the significance of what they are trying to achieve. The team has been struggling, we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what is going wrong and how to get back on target. I’ve been watching plans, schedules and commitments, jumping in to lend a hand—whether […]
Firing Top But Toxic Performers — Additional Thoughts
A few weeks ago, I posted Would You Fire Your Top Sales Performer. It’s generated quite a conversation on the various different sites that it’s been posted. I’ve been surprised by the number of comments basically saying, “If the person is producing sales, let them keep doing so, regardless of whether they are doing the CRM system.” There were some very thoughtful responses talking about the business risk of firing your top producers. The comments got me to thinking about Toxic Salespeople. We’ve all seen them, these are the sales people who are good, maybe even great producers. However, they create […]
New Sales Managers and The Superman Syndrome
The other day, I was having a conversation with Jeff. Jeff was a relatively newly minted sales manager. He had been one of his company’s top revenue producers, consistently beating quota, bringing in some of the biggest and toughest deals in the company. The promotion to sales manager was a great step forward for Jeff in his career. I had the opportunity to have lunch with Jeff, while visiting the company, so I asked him how things were going and how he liked the role of sales manager. Jeff, hesitated, then he said, “Dave, I’m really struggling. I’m working longer […]
Sales Management—Pieces Of The Puzzle
The phone conversation was pretty typical: “Dave, we’re starting a major training initiative with our sales organization.” Or it may start, “Dave, we have the wrong people, they aren’t producing the results we need.” My response is almost always, “That’s interesting, what makes you think that will solve the problem?” Often, at this point, you can hear the discomfort over the phone. Often I know the thought is, “Who is this guy asking me about my problem, I’m smart, I know what my problem is.” Sometimes, it’s confusion, “What do you mean?” Or, as my friend, Niall Devitt, describe, they […]
What’s A Killer Question To Ask A Customer….
Visit enough social networking sites, LinkedIn questions, and sales forums, and you will see questions like this: “What’s a killer question to ask a customer?” or “What’s a killer value proposition that will win?” or “What’s a killer close?” Someone is always looking for the “killer” approach, as if you can answer that independent of the customer, the situation and the solutions you represent. Is the killer question I ask a consumer looking to buy a new car the same killer question I ask a CEO investing millions of dollars restructucturing his organization and strategy, or the same question I ask […]
Sales Leaders Organizational Checkup and Self-Assessment
I was talking about one of my favorite topics, sales leadership, with my close friend and client, Jeff Stanley, Director Of Sales Excellence, AT&T Mobility. Jeff is one of those great pracitioners and coaches in Sales Onboarding and Sales Management. He is always very pragmatic–with suggestions that have been operationally tested. In our conversation, Jeff was coming up with so many ideas, I asked him to write a guest post for this blog. It’s below (I did have to embellish it some–you’ll recognize some of my additions.). Sales Leaders Organizational Checkup and Self-Assessment By Jeffrey Stanley, Director of Sales […]