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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
We Need More Wins!
Virtually every organization I know is struggling with making their numbers. Every sales person, manager, executive inevitably says: “We need to make our numbers, we need more wins, we need more in our pipelines!” Inevitably programs du jour are launched. Sales people are told, “Get more into your pipeline.” They’re told to prospect, we start counting prospecting conversations, and counting pipeline deals. Inevitably pipelines grow—every self respecting sales person can always get more in their pipeline. Tell me the number you want, I will make it 100% of the time–I’ll even overachieve that goal. But I may be filling my […]
The Hidden Sales Productivity Drain
Regardless your level, look at your weekly calendar. Unless you are a total dolt, I can guess what it looks like: Your time is completely filled, often with overlaps in meetings, some with multiple things scheduled at the same time. The demands on your time exceed what you can schedule—and you do a lit of shifting/juggling. Your to-do list isn’t getting shorter, in fact it’s getting longer–and you seem to be completing fewer things each week. You’ve never been busier. You may feel like you are accomplishing a lot-because of your activity levels, but at the end of the month/quarter/year, […]
What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing — Part 5
Whew, we are getting to the end of this series! Thanks to those of you who have hung in and contributed. I’ll be packaging this as an eBook, give me a couple of weeks, but email me if you want a copy. We’ve gone through the philosophies and principles underlying the Toyota Production System, (TPS), in the past 4 posts of this series. If you haven’t read them, here are the links: What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. In this post I’d like to focus on some of the challenges we face […]
Compressing The Sales Cycle
There’s an interesting conversation going on in LinkedIn. It starts with the question, “Is reducing the time between customer meetings the only way to compress the sales cycle?” This focuses on what we call wall/calendar time (look at the clock or calendar on the wall, reduce time between meetings–shorten sales cycle). It is a way to reduce sales cycle, but it’s probably the least controllable way to do this. In reality, I think there are far better ways to reduce sales cycle, while also increasing the probability of winning. First, you have to chase the right deals! Nothing increases sales […]
3 Questions
I’ve had the good fortune to spend a lot of time with some inspirational leaders. Over time, I’ve noticed some common patterns in every conversation they have with people in their organization, customers, suppliers, even within their business communities. While there are variations, I call it the “3 questions.” The three questions have almost magical power: They have the ability to communicate and reinforce the top priority of the leader. They have the ability to help the leader learn about things that impact their top priority. They have the ability to help the person the leader is speaking with think […]
What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing — Part 4
We’re almost through the 14 principles of lean manufacturing that underlie the Toyota Production System (TPS). If you haven’t read the three preceding articles, you may find them helpful: What Sales Can Learn From Lean Manufacturing, Part 2, and Part 3. So far we’ve looked at the Philosophy of TPS, which provides the foundation for everything. It’s interesting, while these 4 philosophies are the foundation for the Toyota Production System and lean manufacturing, they have nothing do do with manufacturing. They are sound business practices. Supporting the 4 philosophies are the 14 principles. We’ve completed the first 9, today we’ll […]