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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 “Lost Generation”
I’ve been writing a series of posts on business fundamentals. Nothing new, but a refocus on the importance of the basics any of us learned in our Business Fundamentals 101 courses. The concept of revenue growth has been around for millennia. I suspect after Eve sold Adam the first apple, she went back with a bag of apples, focused on scaling revenue. At the same time, we learned another business fundamental: To build a sustainable business, you have to make more money than you spend. A concept otherwise known as “profit.” And there are numerous other fundamentals to understanding the […]
A Thought Experiment: “Don’t Bother Me With That Sh*t!”
Let’s do a thought experiment. Imagine we have a seasoned seller. We start providing new tools and technologies focused on improving efficiency. Imagine, “Use this AI tool, you need to 10X your personalized emails….” Alternatively, we say, “You need to build your pipeline….” Or we say, “This is the playbook, stick to it!” Or, “Follow these scripts, they are proven! Don’t change a single word!” But the seller came back to us, “Don’t bother me with that sh*t! Selling is all about relationships. When the going gets tough, the tough go to lunch or send logo coffee mug!” We would […]
What’s Happened To Business Fundamentals?
Seeing this title, some of you may be thinking, “Dave’s such a broken record. He keeps talking about business/financial acumen in our GTM strategies…. Enough already!” Well, this is another business/financial acumen post–but with a different twist. I will continue to write how important it is to understand our customers’ businesses and engage them in discussing their business challenges. But this is a slightly different perspective. How well do we (including executive levels) understand the business fundamentals underlying our own businesses and our own success? Almost surprisingly, this topic keeps coming up in conversations. Many experienced colleagues, some of them […]
Automating The Things We Weren’t Doing Anyway……..
So many sellers are enthralled with all the time saving things AI does for them. Things like updating CRM, other data entry, generating reports, doing research…… The lists go on. The argument is, “Look at all the time it’s saving!” But the problem is, too many people weren’t doing these things in the first place. CRM compliance has been a major issue for decades. As much a we train and encourage people to do research and analysis into their customers, whether it’s in developing their deal strategies, preparing for calls, trying to more deeply understand customers; for years we’ve seen […]
Imagine This New Technique, “Honesty!”
My friend, Aaron Evans, posted something fascinating in LinkedIn. I find myself confused, perhaps more importantly, dismayed. Aaron, was showing a simple, direct prospecting email. His comment was, “Honest, funny, to the point, respectful and human.” While he responded “No,” he was impressed by the approach. A few things struck me and I commented on it: I’m struggling with this whole idea. In what world is honesty, respect, directness; something that stands out as being differentiated–even though it is irrelevant? We have become accustomed to a new norm. One that is completely the opposite of what we have come to […]
“I Never Lost A Deal Because Of Objection Handling….”
My thought partner, Lahat Tzvi, and I were having our monthly conversation today. We started discussing much of what we see about the “secrets to sales success.” We both see guru’s posting the determining secret to success. Somehow that secret is related to what they sell. They make claims about improving objection handling, improving closing, more effective discovery, better prospecting, better value creation, winning deal strategies, high impact sales calls, better……. The perspective is, “Master this one thing and you will double your win rate or improve your ability to hit plan or maximize your comp.” These things are important——rather, […]