Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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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
What Is High Performance?
I was speaking to a client a few weeks ago about some “performance” issues he saw in the organization. He was relatively new in his job and was besieged with performance issues. In our discussion, I expected him to talk about the low performers and how he should be dealing with them. Instead, he was troubled by some people viewed by many in the organization, including his boss, as high performers. Since high performers are role models of what is expected in sales, normally, we would be looking at how to replicate the performance of these people across the organization. But my client […]
It’s Account Planning Season
As we race to year end, trying to make our numbers, we also enter “account planning season.” All of us have done account plans. Too often, it’s that annual exercise management makes us go through. We prepare and conduct fancy presentations. We talk about all the things we want to accomplish—meet more executives, expand our contacts and visibility in the customer, displace competition, sell them more stuff, become a “valued partner.” Every account plan always includes a lot of actions and activities. Usually, there’s some sort of executive visit. We leverage one of our execs to meet a key customer […]
Just Because It’s Interesting To You, Doesn’t Mean I Care
The phone rang, a sales person introduced himself asking, “Who’s in charge of credit card processing?” Whenever, I don’t know the answer to those things, I say it’s me. He then went on with his pitch. With one glaring problem, the pitch was actually pretty good. He offered some insight in changes that were happening in credit card processing (as a result of legislation) that would dramatically increase processing fees. He then asked, “Have you seen big changes in your credit card processing fees?” I replied, “No, and I’m not really interested in this conversation.” Sensing I was about to […]
In Praise Of Templates, Checklists, Complete Sentences, And Writing Things Down!
I can hear the groans already. Thousands of sales people and some managers are saying, “Here’s Dave talking about writing things down.” In workshops, I see eyes rolling back in people’s heads, with the very clear body language, “Here he is telling us to write this stuff down, it’s becoming all about paperwork!” I’m sorry, I’m an unabashed fan of templates, checklists, and complete sentences. I’m a raving advocate of writing things down. Writing is thinking! We tend to fool ourselves as we look at our sales strategies and plans. We think we’re thinking and analyzing, but we really aren’t. […]
Developing Insights
Everyone has been talking about Insights. Our customers are hungry for Insights about their businesses–opportunities to grow, opportunities to improve. We know we have to engage our customers in new conversations. These conversations have to be about them and their goals, not about what we sell. So Insights are the new “buzzword,” for sales. But all of us, me included, have been a little casual about this discussion. I’ve talked a lot about the importance of Insight, how we communicate, how we continue to engage our customers in Insight driven conversations through their buying process. I’ve talked about company strategies […]
Do You Trust Your People Enough To Let Them Think?
It’s odd, we interview people, anxious to hire the best and the brightest. Those people that have the proven track records, skills and experience to perform at the highest levels. We assess people on their ability to think on their feet and respond quickly. In the interview process, we have questions designed to test their ability to think. We may engage them in scenarios and role plays to see how they handle themselves. We may leverage formal assessments, testing cognitive and other capabilities. We find the right candidates–hopefully really smart people, onboard them, then put them in handcuffs (or whatever the functional […]