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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
Meeting Commitments
On Friday, I realized I had failed at something—miserably. A few weeks ago, I met with a great team. We had an exciting project, we agreed on the action plan and next steps. This action plan was highly dependent on some things I committed to. Two and a half weeks passed. The person leading the project reached out, “Dave, we’d like a follow up meetings, but we are missing some stuff…….” I was ashamed. I missed meeting a commitment. As a result it slowed us down. I dropped everything, quickly completed my work. But we’ve lost a little time, and […]
“I Can Do It Better Than Them…..”
Marcus Cauchi has been writing a provocative series of posts on mistaken sales management behaviors. The posts and discussion are fantastic, make sure you read them. He asked for my thinking on the issue. We see all sorts of bad management behaviors. Some of it seems to be driven by a compulsion to “help” our people succeed. Much of it is driven by a lack of trust managers have in their people. Almost all if it is driven by the mindset, “We have to make our numbers.” Too many managers have a “Superperson” complex. They were, possibly, great sellers and […]
The Hidden Cost Of False Efficiency
My friend and mentor, Lahat Tzvi, wrote one of the most fascinating posts on AI I’ve read. Be sure to read it! In it, he coined the phrase, “The Hidden Cost Of False Efficiency.” It’s such an important concept–and at the root of many of the challenges we face in growing our businesses. I’ve written too often and whined too much about our continued inability to focus on effectiveness, outcomes, and continual improvement. I don’t want to reiterate those issues here. Our obsession with efficiency has tremendous costs, not just financial. We are only starting to recognize these, but I’m […]
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 […]