Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
“There’s Room For Humanity In Business…”
One of my favorite things to do on Friday mornings is to listen to Matt Heinz and Brent Adamson’s “Coffee with Brent/Matt.” If you aren’t watching it, you should. It’s huge fun–and every once in a while they get onto some really interesting issues. Brent made a comment, “There’s room for humanity in business…..” It struck me oddly, my initial reaction was, “Well duhhhh! Thanks for the insight, Brent.” (One of my missions in life is to harass Brent, and he, gleefully, reciprocates.). But on reflection, I realized that his observation is an indication of how “we”–all of us, have […]
“I Don’t Have The Time To Coach!!”
I spend a lot of time with sales managers, at all levels. Too often, I hear the lament, “I don’t have the time to coach!” I ask to look at their calendars. As you might expect, the calendars are packed with meeting after meeting–on all sorts of things. Endless forecast and pipeline discussions–usually between managers and not with people. Endless discussion on “the numbers” and the challenges of achieving them. Sometimes, task forces to address these challenges. We see them leading team meetings, but usually these are fairly one way discussions, “You aren’t hitting the numbers, you need to do […]
Trick Or Treat……
This morning, as a drank my morning coffee, I went through my email and social feeds. You can guess what I encountered. At first I chuckled, I thought, “These people have a great sense of humor and irony! Who could imagine such really awful prospecting. They must be playing with Halloween and “Trick or Treat.” In the spirit of the Holiday, I responded to a few. One email was: Hey David – I can get 5Da612E7B495Bc000168C6Ba 3 new clients each month with our guided interview system. Takes less than 90 min of your time and you can leverage the assets […]
Mirroring
Early in my selling career, I was in a short training class. We were being taught how to “mirror” our customers. The concept of mirroring is it was a means of better connecting with the customer. We learned that if a customer leaned forward in their chair, perhaps indicating interest, we should lean forward. Likewise, if they leaned back we leaned back; if they swore, we swore; if they farted……. OK, I’m getting carried away with this explanation. I always felt uncomfortable doing it. It was a conscious manipulative behavior to establish rapport and gain the interest of the person […]
Let’s Banish The Word “Pitch” From Our Vocabularies!
The word “Pitch” has dominated selling language. We are constantly subjected to pitches through email, social channels and in the media. We seek, overtly, to pitch our offerings and products to prospects and customers. Recently, my good friend, ChatGPT had a discussion about pitches. I asked her the origin of this concept: The word “pitch” in the context of selling comes from the Old English word “pician,” which means “to throw” or “to thrust.” In the Middle Ages, it evolved to refer to setting up a stall or spot where one could sell goods, as in “pitching” a tent or […]
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 […]