Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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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 Importance Of Follow Up
Not long ago, I was speaking with a group of sales managers. They were struggling with the performance of their people. We were talking about their account planning process. They showed me some current account plans. They weren’t great, but they were better than most I see. One thing that struck me, is that rather than giving a status report on the account, their people had identified opportunities to grow the relationship. They established action plans to pursue the growth opportunities. I asked them, “What’s happened on those action plans? What progress are your people making, where do they need […]
Are You An Indispensable Partner?
Periodically, my friend, Martin Schmalenbach, and I have conversations on the state of “Value Co-Creation,” and selling. Recently, Martin brought up the concept, “Are you an indispensable partner?” My mind started going crazy with the potential of the concept of being an Indispensable Partner. I’m still formulating my thinking on this, but in the spirit of provoking a wider conversation, here are some thoughts: How’s this different from being a trusted advisor? We face huge challenges in becoming “trusted advisors.” Too often, sellers don’t care, just playing the numbers game, perhaps remembering P.T. Barnum’s quote, “There’s a fool born every […]
Meeting People Where They Are…
Read anything on leadership, coaching, social change, human interaction, and a common theme arises. To connect and engage effectively, we have to meet people where they are at. This requires us to focus on them, where they are, who they are, what they face. It requires us to listen, probe, understand. To the degree that we can, we have to imagine ourselves in their shoes. Often, however, we listen with an agenda. So often, particularly as leaders and sellers, we are looking for the problem. After all, that’s what we do—solve problems. But the problem is not a person. It’s […]
Prisoners Of Our Own Experience
Jeremy Donovan published some fascinating data in a post on LinkedIn. He stated 5 years ago, the number of touches, per opportunity, for cold outbound was 200-400. Today, he says it is 1000-1400 touches per opportunity. His observation, “Simply Speechless” is, if anything, an understatement. He does offer some clarification, these touches are across all channels, for example email, phone, social, text. He also says this is across many accounts and contacts. What this means is to find a single opportunity, there are 1000-1400 touches across many potential customers. He goes further, saying this data is for SaaS only. As […]
Proving Math Works…..
There are countless data reporting tools available to sellers and managers. Each provides it’s own take on performance dashboards. Many provide deep insights into performance—your pipeline is anemic, your opens are declining, you aren’t hitting your meeting goals, your win rates are declining. Much of this is helpful, but sometimes there is too much data and we are overwhelmed–what do we pay attention to, what do we address first, what change will give us the greatest performance leverage? One of the biggest issues I encounter in speaking with managers is understanding, “What’s causing these to happen?” We have the data, […]
One Size Doesn’t Fit All!
Everywhere, we see insights and advice. Some well intended and sometimes effective, some pure wastes of time. The advice usually starts out with the following: This advice comes from all sorts of sources. It may be something you’ve learned in your company’s sales training/enablement programs. It may be something you see the top performer in your company doing. Or your manager may be telling you what to do. And your LinkedIn and other feeds are filled with all sorts of tricks and techniques, that if you “do it this way,” perhaps paying a fee to see what it is, you […]