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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
When’s The Last Time You Visited A Customer?
One of the most fun things I get to do is spend time with sales people calling on customers. There’s something about being with a sales person (particularly a good one) in front of a customer that changes your perspective. The customer isn’t an abstract persona, she’s not a data point in a report or analytics, the customer isn’t part of a market research sample, he’s not someone trying to take advantage of us, she’s not reliant on digital channels to navigate their buying process. A customer is a human being, trying to get more done than he has time […]
Stop Making Sales People Look Stupid!
Would you willingly make 10,20, 30 prospecting calls a day if you knew the customer probably thinks you are stupid? Hopefully, that’s a basic intelligence test. No one wants to look stupid! Yet so many prospecting programs are designed this way. I’m sure not intentionally, but through lack of focus, research, or having something meaningful to say. Think of the truly stupid things that could be avoided: “Can I speak to the person responsible for [Insert whatever you want] buying decisions?” Given the wide availability of intelligence on customers, whether tools supplied by your CRM vendors, LinkedIn, Facebook, and any […]
My Favorite Sales Books
I hate starting posts with an apology. Particularly to a group of outstanding people, many of whom are friends–authors of sales books. There are a lot of awesome ideas out there by experienced and thoughtful people. At this moment, I’m writing “blurbs” for several soon to be published books, by friends, on selling and sales management. Soon, I hope to join the ranks of those people with my own first book, tentatively titled, “The Sales Manager’s Survival Guide.” Lest everyone get a little puffed up, there is a huge amount of crap out there. I think the crap outweighs the […]
Do You Respect Your People Enough To Fire Them?
Unfortunately, one of the biggest sins I see in performance management is avoidance. Usually, we’re good at recognizing problem performers. We’re just terrible in dealing with them. There all sorts of reasons we avoid dealing with them–all bad. They include: Dealing with problem performers takes a lot of time. Dealing with problem performers is no fun–for both the manager and the problem performer. Dealing with problem performers creates stressful, sometimes confrontive situations. Most people tend to avoid these. But to me, the ultimate betrayal of trust, the ultimate form of disrespect of an individual is not to deal with the […]
I Owe A Sales Person An Apology!
Friday late afternoon, I was rushing to finish a few things. My wife and I had planned a nice evening out, but I wanted to clean my physical and virtual desks of work. The phone rang, a woman asked, “May I speak to Kacey about your payroll issues?” “Arrgghhh, ” I thought, “some clueless sales person.” Instead I responded, “Kacey isn’t in. She’s one of our marketing assistants, and has nothing to do with payroll (though I’m sure she would love to).” The sales woman responds, “Oh, we were misinformed, we thought she had payroll responsibility. Can you tell me […]
“Solve Your Problem Before I Have To Solve Mine”
It happened many years ago, but I still remember it as though it was yesterday. I was sitting with my manager on a Friday morning doing a review. I was fortunate to manage one of the hottest groups of sales people in the hottest market space in the company. My team of about 60 people was on track to blow our numbers away–again. We would produce $300-400 Million in revenue, lock in our position as global share leader in the solution space. I thought we were flying, and the meeting would be like our usual Friday meetings, exploring how we […]