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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
Bits And Pieces — August 20, 2016
Here are some of the things on my mind this week: Current Reading: Team of Teams, New Rules of Engagement For A Complex World, McChrystal, Collins, Silverman, Fussell: I believe managing/dealing with complexity is one of the most profound issues facing leaders of all types in today’s world. Team of Teams provides and outstanding starting point looking at why complexity is so important, why our current methods and models for dealing with complicated fail in looking at complexity. I expected the book to have simply a “Special Forces” take on nimbleness, adaptability, and so forth, instead it takes a far […]
If You Can’t Write, You Can’t Sell
In the past few days, I’ve been embroiled in conversations about grammar and spelling. I read an discussion about “Should I hire a sales person with poor writing skills.” I was astounded by the majority of responses. Many people had the view, “If they can sell, who cares!” The conversations about grammar ran along similar lines, “It’s all about ideas and closing business, who cares about grammar and spelling?” Some of you, will think this post is about writing, grammar, and spelling—it isn’t. But writing skills, grammar, spelling are critical skills for sales people–if you can’t write clearly, if you […]
Account Based Everything
I’m somewhat amazed, but pleasantly so, about the sudden discovery of “Account Based Selling,” or as the great folks at TOPO refer to it, Account Based Everything. It’s important for reasons beyond the “account based” focus, but at the same time, I have to chuckle at the apparent novelty of the concept. My very first sales job, I was part of a team that sold to a single account–that was in the late 70’s. There were 5 of us on the team, I was the most Junior. We were responsible for driving over $30M a year in the account (And […]
Should “A Players” Care About Grammar?
I’ve been having a little fun at my friend Mike Weinberg’s expense on LinkedIn. Mike posted an update: “Just received a condescending email from a sales rep critiquing the grammar in my latest blog post. Found it amusing and it has me wondering if he’s a top-performer/A-Player. My guys says A-Players focus on results not the grammar in FREE blog posts.” I get as annoyed as Mike about people losing the “message,” and critiquing my spelling and grammar (and, undoubtedly, I will deserve complaints on this post.) But it presents an opportunity to talk about A players. Stated differently, this […]
Predictably Unpredictable
Over the past few years there’s been a huge rush to “predictability” in sales and marketing. Marketing and sales automation tools strive to increase our ability to predict interest and propensity to buy. Inbound and outbound sales development reps are scripted to qualify and move prospects through a series of steps that have very predictable outcomes. As people have broken the code to Predictable Revenue, they ramp up the volume and velocity to drive more and more. The process and metrics become very formularized. We know how to drive results just by following the formula and minimizing deviation from the […]
5 Skills To Turn Sales Managers Into Sales Leaders
I have to admit being appalled reading an article entitled, 5 Skills To Turn Sales Managers Into Sales Leaders (I won’t link to it, you would waste your time, but if you want to find it, google it). The article identified these 5 critical skills: Setting Goals. Developing A Strategy. Setting Expectations. Understanding Drivers and Drainers. Evaluating ROI. There virtually no discussion of people in the entire article! There is no discussion of the real challenges of leadership in today’s complex world. When the key responsibility of a leader is to get things done through people, how can you write […]