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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
“All Generalizations Are Wrong…..” Be Aware Of Expert Advice
1000’s of blogs from real and self-proclaimed experts appear every day. Each asserts they have “the answers.” Often, these answers are based on deep experience from the writer. We can learn a lot in reading those. We are hungry for answers. Each of us faces challenges that are real and very difficult. We are anxious to find answers, often leaping to “magic solutions” based on the experience of some pundit. But there are no silver bullets. These solutions are based on specific experiences these experts have had, but have been generalized to address and attract interest from a broad audience. […]
Sales Effectiveness: Focus On The Individual Or The Organizational Performance?
The other day, Matt Dixon and I were having a discussion, trying to solve all the problems of sales. As is often, the case in these discussions, we started reflecting on a lot of broad and, possibly, esoteric issues. We started talking about what ultimately may be a Chicken/Egg issue. We were considering, “Where is the next big rock to turn over in driving sales effectiveness? Do we focus on driving individual performance or do we look at overall organizational excellence?” To jump ahead, the answer is, “We have to do both!” Further, the answer to where do we start […]
AI/Machine Language Will Manager 85% Of Customer Interactions
“According to Harvard Business Review, by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their interactions with an organization without interacting with a human.” If it’s in HBR, it must be right. Through other data, we know customers are self educating on the web, depending on who you read, it’s up to 90% of customers are letting their fingers walk through Google. The implication that many try to make with this data is usually something around the death of sales. Usually the authors try to use this information as a causal effect around the declining need for sales people. Certainly, there is […]
When Will We Stop Thinking Our Customers Are Stupid?
I’m beginning to think far too many sales and marketing people think customers are stupid. What else could it be? As an example, recently I participated in a discussion on LinkedIn. The author proudly declared victory for social selling with the statement: “LinkedIn empirically proves that 51% + of revenue is now influenced by social across some key industries.” Accompanying the statement was a chart displaying research data looking at the % of revenue influenced by social selling across various industry/marketing groups. But when I looked at the research, all sorts of questions started popping up. For example, the companies […]
Automating Sales Coaching
The sales automation suppliers are catching onto the idea of leveraging technology for sales coaching. I’m not a complete dinosaur, I think there is a huge place to leverage technology to complement coaching by managers. However, I worry about some of the approaches being promoted displacing the person to person interaction and the real value of coaching. The power of effective coaching is the power of the learning conversation. The ability to explore, in real-time, the ability to leverage the situation and context to help the sales person think, learn, and grow. In some sense, it’s the power of open-ended […]
The Faces Of Our Customers
Recently, I’ve been trying something new when I meet with clients. I ask, “When was the last time you visited your customers–in a non sales situation? When did you actually see what they do, how they use your solutions? What have you done to get to know them better? Unfortunately, the responses aren’t surprising. Many have never actually visited a customer. If course they’ve met them at trade shows and industry events, they may have spoken to them on the phone. They’ve had email or social exchanges with customers. But too often, the “customer” has become an abstraction. The customer […]