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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 Complete Sales Professional
Dreamforce is coming up next week. As a result, I’ve been inundated with emails from people and companies inviting me to one of their presentations or to their display or for any other type of meeting. They leverage data to help entice me. For example, I see LinkedIn data that says, “Sales professionals who use social selling are 51% more likely to exceed their quotas.” Or CEB data saying “Sales reps who challenge customers’ assumptions make up 54% of high performers in a complex sales environment.” The data point are all interesting, absolutely valid, and compelling. They usually have a format like, […]
The Manager’s Real Job Isn’t Making The Number
I wrote “Sales Managers Only Have One Real Goal.” It stimulated a lot of thoughtful conversation. Christian Maurer shared a particularly astute, and troubling observation: “I am afraid though that many high level executives might not share this view. In the name of shareholder value they are still chasing after the number and forcing first level sales managers to do the same.” Sadly, I think Christian’s right. Too often, we’re focused on chasing the number. We define everything we do as managers around the number. But this focus shows a real misunderstanding. Our attainment–making our numbers, achieving goals are outcomes […]
Sales Managers Only Have One Real Goal!
There’s a lot of stuff written about what sales managers have to do and their key job responsibilities. Some of the laundry list items include: Make sure the team makes the number, develop the strategy, manage the forecast/pipeline, manage performance, recruit, train, coach, and on and on. There lots of ways we see managers behaving. Some seem to think they have to be super sales people–the person that comes in to close the deal. Others act primarily as administrators, trapped behind a desk, analyzing numbers, internally focused, never out with their people with customers. The sales manager’s job can be very […]
Just Stop Wasting Time On Those Reports!
We all spend a lot of time reporting. Someone higher on the food chain is always looking for data. So we do what we have to do, wondering why are we wasting our time, how are they going to use it (the big brother issue), or if they even look at it. Fortunately, a lot of the CRM and related tools, if we use them, minimize the amount of time we spend reporting. If we keep them updated, they can provide most anything management would ever want. Frankly, I think we waste a lot of time on reports and reporting. Mostly, […]
The Perfect Prospecting Letter (???)
I receive lots of requests from sales and marketing experts to promote things they are doing, whether it’s a webinar, eBook, Book. Most of the time I’m delighted to do so. Many have been very generous in supporting and helping me. Even if it’s someone I don’t know, generally, once they introduce themselves and show me what they are doing, I’m glad to promote. There are usually interesting ideas, different approaches to selling or marketing, things that all of us can learn from. (I do have to admit, having trouble dealing with the sheer volume of these, currently I’m reviewing […]
Great Customer Service Doesn’t Equal Great Customer Experience
I have to admit writing this post out of frustration. I’ve been, at the encouragement of the service provider, changing our mobile plans to save money. I’m not changing vendor, just the plans. At this point, I’m beginning to believe what it is costing me in time and frustration will far exceed the money I’m saving. The funny thing is the customer service people I talk to on the phone are fantastic! They are well trained, very efficient, very helpful. They are truly a delight to deal with. From a customer service point of view, I can’t give them any higher […]