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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
LinkedIn Networking Run Amuck!
I wish I was making this stuff up, unfortunately, the incredibly bad practices of too many on LinkedIn are far more intriguing than anything I could make up. This morning, I get two LinkedIn messages from the same individual. The first was a InMail–it had something to do with effective use of LinkedIn InMails, and email marketing, but he wanted to talk to me about a product he is selling to do this stuff. The second was an invitation to connect — and you guessed it, it was the standard LinkedIn invitation, “I’d like to connect…..” You can already begin […]
Dealing With Poor Performers
As managers and leaders we like working with our top performers. It’s creative, they “get it,” we focus on how we win, how we grow the business. If we’re doing our jobs right, however good they are, we are always coaching, developing, stretching them to grow, and achieve more. Sometimes, we give them special developmental opportunities, exposure to execs, special projects–but they deserve it, and it helps build them as sales and business professionals. By contrast, dealing with poor performers is difficult. It’s not pleasant. They aren’t doing the job, reviews become contentious. We struggle to get them to improve, […]
Is Your House In Order?
I had a mentor that used to say, “You better make sure your house is in order, before you start complaining about the mess in your neighbor’s.” Another mentor used to say, usually when I was whining about something, “Remember, when you point your finger blaming something else, three fingers are pointing back at you.” (The visual below may help.) I wrote, It’s Never JUST A Sales Problem, Kurt, correctly pointed out “a superior organization will as much and as long as possible take responsibility for delivering results, regardless…..” He’s absolutely right. Too often, I hear sales people and even […]
What We Can Learn From The ER!
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be taken to an Emergency Room, you know the concept of Triage. In triage, they aren’t trying to determine what caused your heart to stop, why you may have stopped breathing, what’s causing profuse amounts of blood to pour from your body. All they are trying to do is keep you alive long enough to determine the underlying problem. They do what they must to get your heart beating–then send you into cardiology, or get you breathing, or stop the bleeding. It’s never pretty. It’s seldom the “solution,” it just allows you to […]
What’s The Purpose Of Account Planning?
We talk a lot about account planning, particularly if our “territory” is one or a few large accounts. Generally, we wrap a lot of nice words around the reasons we do account planning: Develop deep and trusted relationships in the account. Create a customer for life, through providing great, ongoing customer experiences. Grow the account. Become a strategic partner. Build additional business….. The list can go on. All are important, but sometimes, I tend to be a little more crass. I believe it’s my God-given right to 100% share of the account! That means it’s my job to find all […]
Is The Email “Open” Really The Goal?
I read an intriguing post from Jim Keenan about Subject Lines That Work For Sales Emails. It showed an infographic about the subject lines that maximized email opens. The top 5 are: RE: (with 92% opens) RE: Follow Up (with 90% opens) RE: Update (with 89% opens) RE: Introduction (with 88% opens) RE: Checking In (with 87% opens) The thing that struck me is these are all manipulations. They are fundamentally oriented to trick the recipient into opening the email. Perhaps thinking the email was a response to an email originally sent by the recipient. It raises an issue, Is […]