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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
Are We Enabling Or Crippling Our Sales People?
Enablement is one of those $100 words as you read anything in the sales and marketing literature. There’s lots of discussion around “Sales Enablement.” In fact there’s even the Sales Enablement Society, which actually is doing some good work in discussing hot issues in enablement . The concepts of enabling our sales people isn’t just limited to the sales enablement function. Marketing, product management, sales management, and others play key roles in enabling sales people. While all the work is well intended, I wonder if, too often, the unintended consequence of this work is actually “disabling” or crippling our sales […]
Thanks For Training Me Not To Answer My Phone!
I’ve stopped answering my phone–whether it’s my office, mobile, or home phone, I’ve stopped answering it unless: I recognize the phone number and it’s someone I know. I recognize the caller ID and it’s someone I’m willing to talk with–either someone I know or a company/person that I’m willing to talk with. If for some reason, I’ve gone stupid and pick up a call from someone I don’t know, and I hear that dead air or clicking as I’m being connected to a person, I hang up before that person has the chance to connect. People I want to talk […]
“What Did You Sell That For…..?”
I have to start this post with a story. Some years ago, I was the executive assistant to one of the top executives in IBM. We were sitting down for our morning meeting to review the day and our priorities. He had just returned from the office after several days in the field with sales people and customers. I asked him, “How did the visits go?” It was all the excuse he needed to go on a rampage. “I was visiting this sales team and they were really excited about a big deal they had closed. I asked, ‘What did […]
“Sales Hasn’t Changed, We’re Just Leveraging Cool New Tools!”
I read a quote from Graham Hawkins. I started, “Sales hasn’t changed…..” Those quotes suck me into reading further and Grahame made the point that sales has changed profoundly. But I reflected, is this true? I know that buying and buyers have changed. It has become increasingly difficult to reach and engage them. They are incredibly busy doing their own jobs, and often are just trying to survive. Where sellers were important sources of information to buyers, they now have many, far better channels to get information on new solutions, capabilities, and so forth. Where sales would introduce buyers to […]
The Power Of “Ritual Questions”
Recently, I read an article about “Ritual Questions.” It’s a powerful concept–but I think leaders can take the concept much further. As I work with and study great leaders, I’ve noticed they all do something similar. They ask the same questions over and over. The questions are a little different depending on the person and the context, but the underlying core question is always the same. These leaders are obsessive in asking these questions–every person they speak with in the organization, customers, suppliers. There is a consistency in what they ask, the conversations they have over long periods of time. […]
We Get Sales Math Wrong! The Magic Is In The Numerator!
My apologies, I’m doing a series of rants that are something akin to David Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks. Instead these posts are about Stupid Sales Management/Marketing/Sales Tricks. Sales and marketing are among the most measured functions around. But having these metrics, knowing what they mean, developing and executing plans to improve performance and knowing what to do about them are not well understood. Too often, we leap to the stupid answer, not to the answers that really turn the dials on performance. Here are some examples, while they may seem laughable, they are real. I’m not smart enough to make […]