Innovation
“Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. “ Theodore Levitt (1925 – 2006), Renown economist
Innovating, continuously, is critical to sustained growth and success. But too often, we misunderstand and underexploit innovation. We tend to think of innovation as groundbreaking inventions, technologies, and business models.
But innovation represents so much more. Incremental innovation helps us continuously improve that which we already do. Improving our effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, and performance is critical for each of us, every day. Leaders must continuously drive performance improvement with everyone in the organization.
Innovation is not just about creating new things, it is about thinking and doing things differently. It is recognizing that what got us to where we are is probably insufficient to getting us where we want to be, we have do change.
We provide a rich set of workshops, tools, methods, and processes to support constant innovation—both within our own organizations and helping our customers innovate.
Innovation Posts
Surrendering To AI…..
Every day, we see exciting new applications of AI. We all know the power of AI in helping take over administrative tasks, helping research customers, prospects, taking the tedium out of developing content or drafting emails. These tasks, which take so much of our time, and that, often, do poorly can now be done by […]
Forcing Customers To Buy The Way We Want To Sell!
There’s a fascinating article in HBR this month, A Better Way To Link Sales And Marketing. There’s a lot “right” about this article. It offers very good insights about how we engage our customers very effectively, consistently, and efficiently. It talks about how we integrate our communications strategies effectively across all parts of the organization–marketing, […]
Rethinking Scaling…..
Scaling is “in fashion.” Our feeds are filled with discussions about scaling, growing regardless of cost. The strategies on scaling have been reduced to mathematical equations that “perfectly” predict how to achieve our goals. Want to grow by 100%, easy—double your outreach and activities, double your pipeline, “poof” you’ve scaled. The path to 100% growth […]
The “Tell Me More” Problem
LLMs are providing sellers the opportunity to reshape their engagement strategies. Ideally, enabling higher impact first conversations. We can ask the LLM to research the organization, identifying the key issues the company is facing. We can ask the LLM to write a relevant prospecting letter focusing on a certain persona. We can ask it to […]
AI Will Not Be The Differentiator…….
As with any new technology, we rush to leverage it, thinking the fact that we are leveraging it becomes a differentiating capability. Just look at how many technology companies are trumpeting their incorporation of AI in their products. Marketing materials, sales pitches, everything is, “We are using AI! We have incorporated ChatGPT (insert the name […]
“This Is Just The Way Things Are…….”
I have to confess huge frustration with too many of the conversations I see in my social feeds. People take a position, leveraging (perhaps cherry picking) data to support their premises. While, their arguments make sense–obviously, they’ve structured them to make sense, but they are fundamentally flawed. Most of the time, they are just defenses […]
AI, Freeing Up Selling Time…….
Everyday, we see new ways that AI helps us accomplish more in less time. It helps us research our customers, prepare emails, actually do the outreach, plan calls, manage many of our responses, update CRM, understand our numbers, alert us to new opportunities, ……. It seems each day, we see parts of our jobs that […]
Information Asymmetry…..
Information Asymmetry has been a powerful tool in buying/selling almost from when Eve convinced Adam to take a bite of an apple. Centuries ago, Francis Bacon said, “Knowledge is power.” We’ve always tended to wield that knowledge as a weapon, creating advantage to us. Information asymmetry occurs where one party has a disproportionate informational or […]
The Pursuit Of Easy……
Continuous improvement is critical to our ability to grow, both as individuals and organizations. Whether it’s to drive higher levels of productivity/performance, responding to changes in our customers or markets, addressing new opportunities, or anything else. We have to constantly be assessing what we do, who we do it to/with, how and why we do […]
Embracing Uncertainty As A Factor, Not A Flaw
For at least my entire career in selling and business, we have sought to eliminate uncertainty. We seek to put in place processes and methodologies to increase our success. We embrace data to help us better understand, manage, and forecast performance. We leverage data to better target our customers and analyze their engagement with us. […]
Testimonials
“In a world populated by many, many self-proclaimed "thought leaders," Dave is the real deal--perhaps more than anybody I've met since I've been studying the sales, service and customer experience space. His perspective is informed by deep experience as an executive and business leader himself and by an insatiable curiosity about what's next in the field. I ALWAYS read what Dave posts and make it a regular habit to read anything he writes. We've spent hours together talking about business, new emerging technologies, the latest human psychology and behavioral economics work, you name it. Whenever I have a new idea for a book or article or blog post, he's one of the few people I tend to run the idea by...because he always makes it sharper and generally (though not always successfully) keeps me from sticking my foot in my mouth 🙂 If you have an opportunity to work with him, you should jump at the opportunity. You'll be very glad you did.” Matt Dixon, Co-Author, Challenger Sales, The Challenger Customer, The Jolt Effect, Co-founder DCM Consulting.
“It is DecisionLink's, and my, very good fortune to engage and collaborate with Dave. His brings vast knowledge, extensive skills and laser sharp insight to the sales and marketing domain...and much more. In a world overwhelmed with complexity and rife with buzz-words, fads and cookie-cutter approaches, Dave cuts through the chatter to hone in on the things that matter, that make an impact, that "advance the ball".
Perhaps more important, he is a wise steward of his talents. He gives unselfishly and takes an approach that "my best interest will be found in the best interests of my customers, partners and colleagues". Admirable...and smart.
A word of warning. If you work with Dave, lace 'em up and bring your best effort. It will be a challenge to keep up. It will be rewarding if you do.
Finally, Dave is a pleasure to be around. His reputation, character and integrity are evidenced in his many (and glowing) testimonials. He's a nice guy. He cares about others. He's fun to be around.
I look forward to our professional and personal relationship with Dave, and wholeheartedly recommend him in all regards.” Jim Berryhill, Chairman and Co-Founder
“Dave is that rare voice of reason in a cacophony of sales "leadership" noise. Dave has become my go-to resource for advice on business strategy, anything sales, and as a sounding board for all ideas. Never shy with brutal honesty he has proven invaluable to my success in a short amount of time.” Severan Johnson, Director of Business Operations
“Strategic Partnering is a key strategy in driving Novozymes innovation and growth in the coming years. The partnering programs and processes you have identified and helped us implement will enable us to become ‘Best In Class’ in collaborating and innovating in the future. We are already seeing improved results with our current partnerships.” Director of Partnering Programs
"Dave Brock is an innovator as he thinks different in his approach to the life/work challenges. His solutions approach is a truly unique as is it based in decades of front line application that makes it REAL and highly valuable. There is no one in this industry that matches his demonstrated capability to help, this coming from my own 52 year history in this industry." Mitch Little, Senior Vice President, WW Client Engagement