Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Trust, Deception, LinkedIn
I guess it’s the new standard. Great tools end up being subverted for deceptive—or in the very least tragically bad practices. LinkedIn has increasingly been a channel for SPAM and other just bad marketing/sales approaches. I’ve learned to deal with the unwanted pitches coming through InMail, invitations, and some group communications. It’s an annoyance, but hitting delete is very fast and easy. Every once in a while, I get something from someone that is even more innovative in it’s execution of the worst possible sales and marketing practices one could imagine. It’s especially odd when it’s inflicted by a so-called “expert and best selling […]
Pay For Performance
As is usual this time of year, I’ve been involved in lots of discussions of incentive and commission plans–both last quarter as people plan for the new year, and now as these plans are being introduced at Sales Kick Off Meetings. One of the biggest errors I think organizations make in managing performance and incenting sales people is they try to manage all aspects of the desired behaviors and goals through incentive and commission plans. As a consequence, we start to see very complex commission and incentive plans — impossible for people to understand, difficult to manage, ultimately not achieving the […]
Poor Performers Probably Don’t Know
Addressing performance issues is always tough. Many managers are uncomfortable discussing poor performance issues with poor performers. There are a number of factors that could make these conversations even more difficult–for both the manager and poor performer. Here some things that make these conversations very difficult: First, poorly defined performance expectations. I’m amazed had how many organizations don’t put in place well defined performance plans. A quota isn’t a performance plan! It’s an element of a performance plan, but a good performance plan clearly defines performance expectations, development expectations and a number of other things. It should include quantitative and qualitative […]
Making The Number Isn’t The Point!
The discussion around my post, “Don’t Bother Me With Process!” has been generating some interesting discussions. I’ve been surprised with the number of reactions basically saying, “Who cares whether they follow the process if they are making the number?” What’s surprising me, is most of those comments are coming from managers! As sales leaders, we have a number of responsibilities. First, we have to make the number—no if’s and’s, or but’s. The number is sacred, we sign up for it, and we have to make it. Second, we have to maximize the performance both of the overall organization and of each […]
Don’t Bother Me With Process!
Maureen Blanford challenged me with an interesting question, “What do you do with a person that consistently makes their numbers, but refuses to use the process?” It’s a great question, here’s my take. First, some set up. The sales process represents our organization’s best practices in winning business. We develop the sales process by looking at what our top performers consistently do to win deals, analyzing past wins and losses, and making sure what we do through the sales process is aligned and creates value through the customer buying process. Consequently, leveraging the sales process is critical to getting each […]
Keeping Score
I’ve been having a number of conversations that, to be honest, have surprised me a little. They’ve focused on winning, losing, competing, and accountability. I suppose I’m really a hardliner on the issue of performance and accountability. Selling is an outcomes focused profession (frankly, I think most jobs are or should be outcomes focused). Results count, we are accountable for producing results for our companies and customers. In the end, we either achieve the results we have committed to achieve or we haven’t. And we keep score. We’re measured in the outcomes we produce by quotas, revenue targets, or something […]