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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
On Consistency
I don’t know why, but we never talk about consistency. Consistency is about what we do every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Consistency is a key foundation for learning and improvement. We can’t develop new skills unless we apply them day after day, week after week….. Somehow consistency seems to be anathema to how we work and behave. We are event driven. We have the new program, we try it out for a few days or weeks, until we are bored (Ironically, we do this even for things that work). Then we […]
What We Think Of Our Customers Colors Our Engagement
Someone called seeking coaching on a specific deal. He had fallen into traps which blinded him in moving forward with a winning strategy. He started the conversation with, “The key decisionmaker is really a jerk! He’s power hungry, his people want to do something with us, they’ve presented compelling arguments, but he doesn’t want to go forward……. They are losing so much opportunity, if they only they would implement our system……” A few moments later in the conversation, I learned, “…..He’s relatively new in his role, he’s turning everything upside down, his past experience is with our competitor, so he’s […]
“10 Years Of Experience…..”
I spend a fair amount of time helping clients hire managers and sale people. Usually, I’m in the final round of interviews. I look at their CV’s and LinkedIn profiles. Usually, they are talking about their years of experience in selling. “I’ve been selling complex solutions for 10, 15, 20…..years.” As I look at their job histories, I see tenures of 1-2 years, every once in a while maybe they become “old timers” with 3 years in the same role. You can probably guess what I’m going to say, but I have to say it. As I look at their […]
The “Real Cost” Of A Salesperson
What would you think of a front line manufacturing manager failing to address problems that consistently cost millions of dollars in scrap and rework (not to mention customer sat problems because of missed deliveries)? Or an engineering manager that missed product launches that caused millions in lost revenue? Most people would say these are real problems and if they happened repeatedly, these managers would be fired! Yet, within sales, this practice is common, yet people, that is leaders seem not to care about it, instead the squander millions in mis-hires or in failing to retain top talent. Stated differently, I’ve […]
Sales Training And The “Forgetting Curve”
Every year, billions are spent in sales training. Yet all the data shows over 80% of what is taught is forgotten within 90 days. As a result, what really is happening is that every year we are throwing away billions on sales training. But it’s worse than that. The billions spent represents spending in buying, developing, and delivering training. It doesn’t even include the time/opportunity cost of the people, upon whom we inflict sales training. What do we do about it? First, let me provide a quick tutorial on the “forgetting curve.” One of my favorite blog sites is the […]
Start/Stop/Pivot/Restart Sales Strategies
Sales, as with most things, is something that demands regularity in execution. By that, I mean, there are many things a sales person or manager has to do to perform. Some of the obvious: Prospecting, working deals, planning calls, developing proposals, developing territory/account plans, pipeline management/forecasting, time management, learning/training, one on one’s with managers (hopefully for coaching), and yes, even administrivia. All of these are components of the “whole job.” We have to do all these things, all the time. If we skip one, for example, prospecting, it eventually impacts all other areas. Skipping prospecting means eventually our pipelines run […]