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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
Paying Attention
Perhaps it’s because it’s early Fall (for us in the Northern Hemisphere), but a couple of things have happened this weekend that have caused me to stop and reflect–actually to pay attention. I have just rediscovered “Vinyl.” What I mean, is that I’ve rediscovered physical record albums and the pleasure of listening to music. Some of you might be thinking this will become a discussion about the vastly improved quality and sound. It’s what Neil Young is trying with Pono, or Jay Z with Tidal. With Vinyl, the quality of the music is better–but in truth, I struggle to detect the […]
Gratuitous Name Dropping And Other Deceptions
I got an interesting email from a lead gen company. There was a fascinating line in the email: “We just published a study at [Company Name] about how conversion rates on cold sales emails improve if you gratuitously mention a famous customer, investor, or shared LinkedIn contact.” I was intrigued by this and called few people to check this out. After brief conversations with Donald Trump, Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Jack Welch, Chuck Robbins, Mark Zuckerberg, Ginny Rometty, Carl Icahn, Larry Fink, Barack Obama, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Lawrence, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneris, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, Jay Z, […]
The Eroding Distinction Between Inside And Field Sales
There’s a lot written about the shift from field sales to inside sales. It makes sense–but I wonder is there really much of a distinction between inside and outside sales. Perhaps our notions of inside and outside sales are outdated and we might be better served just focusing on sales. In the “old days,” there were clear distinctions between inside and outside sales. I started my career a field or outside sales person. We were expected to be out of the office calling on customers, in fact for a while we were fined if we were in the office during business […]
Your Channel Partners Aren’t The Enemy!
Few organizations have the ability to reach every possible customers themselves. They can’t afford to hire enough sales people to cover the markets, they don’t have enough deep expertise in certain markets, they need to collaborate with others to provide a complete solution to their customers. Most organizations have found they need to leverage some form of partner or channel to reach all the potential customers, maximizing their ability to sell and grow. These partners come in all shapes and sizes–they may be strategic technology partners, they may be resellers, systems integrators, distributors, VAR’s, VAD’s, manufacturer’s reps, agencies, outsourced sales […]
Bad Selling Fundamentals = Bad Social Selling!
Social Selling is the “Easy Button” for every sales person’s dreams of making quota. At least if you believe 75% of what’s written about Social Selling, all you have to do is leverage LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter Piinterest or whatever your favorite social selling platform is–and you will be successful in sales. Make connections, have a great profile, comment on articles, build your network, reach out and engage. Do this and opportunities will come flying on the door! Interestingly, I’m now starting to see some articles from people who leverage social channels very effectively. They are saying this dream of effortless selling […]
A Rose By Any Other Name……..
Actually, the full context of this phrase comes from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2, Juliet says: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose… By any other name would still smell as sweet…” It turns out that roses aren’t roses aren’t roses. At last count, there were 150 species of rose and thousands of hybrids. As a result, roses are quite different and distinctive. The other day I was speaking with a manager. He was quite anxious to recruit sales people and had come up with a source of pre-trained, experienced sales people. His thought was […]