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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
Trying To “Fix” Our Customers
As leaders, when we think about developing our people, helping them overcome performance challenges, helping them grow; we know we can’t “fix” them—as much as we are tempted to try. We know that our people have to choose to “fix” themselves. They must want to change, they must want to learn, they must want to improve. Once they have made that choice, then we can help them through coaching, learning, and development activities. This isn’t new, it’s a classic part of any leadership development program. And much of our work as leaders is helping our people recognize the need to […]
Time Managing Us!
First, a disclaimer. This post is probably more directed to me than anyone else. I’m struggling with time. Make no mistake, through my career, I’ve been vicious in my time management and priorities. I constantly read and learn to improve my abilities. I invest in tools to help improve my productivity. I delegate everything I can, either to my virtual assistant, someone on my team, or a subcontractor. But somehow all, somehow, seems to be insufficient. It’s helpful, but often, I find myself a little overwhelmed. I find high priority items slipping. I’m a big believer in Covey’s principles around […]
Do You Really Want To Be A Seller?
I was tempted to title this, “Selling–A Calling Or A Job?” When I speak with people who are sellers, I often wonder, “Why did they choose to do this?” For some, it’s the easiest job to get after college. Some are drawn by the potential compensation. For some, it’s the easiest job to get, to often, the bar to get a job selling isn’t very high (this is a management problem). For some, it seems to be a bit of a holding pattern until they figure out what they really want to do. And a small number, usually top performers, […]
The “Adaptable Selling Process”
I went through my very first sales training class in the late 70’s. We were taught the various stages of the selling process. We stepped through prospecting, spent a lot of time on qualifying and discovery, moved on to proposing, closing, and implementation. What I learned and sought to apply, for decades, is no different from what every sales person has learned about the selling process. Training programs have slight variations in the stages, some variations of the critical activities in each stage, but they are very similar in intent. The idea being, if we go through each stage, if […]
Top Performers Do More Of This…..
I love learning what top performers do and what drives high levels of performance. As a result, I’m drawn to articles titled, “Top performers do this….” of “X% of sales people doing this outperform everyone else…. (And X is a stunningly big number.)” The “this…” varies, usually it’s tied to what the author is trying to sell, or their pet agenda. As a result, one reads: Top performers use social selling Top performers use these technologies (insert your favorite sales tech). Top performers are prospecting more effectively or making more calls. Top performers sell with insight. Top performers have higher […]
Yearning To Be Unemployed!!!
Dave Kurlan went on a fascinating rant on LinkedIn today. You should watch it. But his rant provoked me into making a confession. For years, I’ve had a desire to be unemployed—that is to work myself out of my current job. Let me be clear, I love working, I can’t ever imagine not working. I’m fortunate to have clients doing fascinating things, solving really tough problems, creating great results. It’s always such a privilege to work with them. I’m fortunate to have these organizations and people continue to reach out to engage me and our company in thinking differently about […]