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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
The Power Of Visualization!
No, I’m not going to get all “new wavy” and start chanting on you. There is a huge amount of literature on visualization, some of it starts getting out there, but a lot of it is rock solid. Recently, Michael Harris, commented on one of my LinkedIn Posts. In the post he brought up visualization. In reflecting on our LinkedIn exchange, I thought about how powerful visualization is in influencing, often totally unconsciously, our behaviors and the outcomes we create. Before I dive, in–a few examples, to start illustrating the point. Many of you know I’m a wannabe athlete, so I […]
Sales, Profession Or Professionalism?
I’ve gotten tangled up in a number of conversations about “Sales Needs To Be A Profession,” lately. To be honest, I’m relatively indifferent about the discussion about whether sales should be a profession or not. But you can’t drag me off my soapbox on the subject of professionalism in sales. The “Profession Of Selling:” Usually when we talk about a “profession,” what we are referring to is a certification process. That process often requires a minimum level of formal training/education, some level of practical. but supervised experience, and some sort of certification process–usually some sort of exam. When we talk […]
Don’t Trust Your Sales Process, Challenge It, Break It!
Anthony Iannarino wrote a post, “Trust The Sales Process.” It’s a great read, but I’ll take a contrarian approach. Sales people shouldn’t trust the sales process–they should challenge it and try to prove that it’s wrong! Before I go further, I have to admit I’m playing some head games with you, I actually agree with Anthony, but think we need to approach it a little differently. The Scientific Method: To provide a little context to my argument, many of you know I fall back to my background in Physics and science. When a scientist develops a new theory, say E=MC(2) (Thank […]
The Entrepreneurial Spirit In Sales, A Discussion With Nikolaus Kimla
Today I had the great pleasure of participating in a discussion of the Entrepreneurial Spirit In Sales. Richard Young, and Martha Neumeister hosted the discussion between Nikolaus Kimla, CEO of Pipeliner CRM and me. It was a fun discussion, even though we barely scratched the surface of the topic. To follow the Twitter discussion search for #Saleseu Thanks to everyone at Pipeliner CRM, particularly Nikolaus, Richard and Martha for making me feel so welcome!
Talk To Someone Different Or New!
I suppose it’s human nature to invest our professional time in the people with whom we have the closest relationships. Yet, in business and sales, spending our time with the same people–either within our company, professional community, and most importantly, in our customers can be severely limiting. Mythology would have it, that sales people are constantly meeting new people and developing relationships–but most of my experience indicates this is largely not true. If it were, we wouldn’t see the constant flood of articles and best practice saying “Prospect!” The reality, is we tend to go back to the same people […]
Why Choose Mediocrity?
The difference between mediocrity and greatness isn’t that much, but I’m constantly amazed by how many choose mediocrity. Our companies spend millions in the best sales training and tools, but we don’t use them. We know that we are supposed to be customer focused if we want to engage and connect with our customers, but we choose to focus on our products and ourselves. We know we are supposed to create value in every exchange we have with the customer, but we don’t take the few minutes before the meeting to figure out the value we create. We know we […]