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
I Want To Be Your Partner
It seems every relationship is becoming a partnership. In every sales situation, rather than creative valued customers we want to have partnerships. Rather than calling customers, customers, we call them partners. I suppose that word change is somehow supposed to mean the relationship is more important. But to often, what we, as sales people really mean is, “We’d love to separate you from some of your money.” Rather than honoring and respecting our customers as valued customers or clients, somehow, we choose to use the “P” word, as if it meant something different. I wonder if someone is a partner […]
Sales Process Is Habit Forming
I was rereading a post from Kevin Eikenberry (Kevin’s a favorite of mine) on The Power Of Habits. Be sure to read it, it’s an important article. As I reread it, I was reminded that so much of what high performing sales people do is habit, using Kevin’s terms, considered habit. High performers have figured out what works. They have learned what it takes to consistently be the best. They’ve learned to recognize the patterns of success—turning them into consistently executed habits. These habits become second nature, it’s just what they do unconsciously. They know that to win a deal, […]
Funnel/Pipeline Games
The funnel/pipeline is a fundamental tool for sales professionals and managers. It’s the tool that helps us understand whether we are on target to meeting our goals. I spend a lot of time looking at funnels. I’ve seen all sorts of issues and potential games (inadvertent and purposeful) that are played with pipelines. I thought I’d spend a little time on a few of them. We all know there the funnel provides us a number of key metrics and indicators about the overall health of our business. Let’s look at a few key elements. The first is overall shape in […]
Getting Things Done Through Our People
Sometimes I think managers leaders aren’t as impactful as we can be because we get our jobs wrong. We think our jobs are about developing great strategies, systems, tools, processes, programs. We spend lot of time analyzing reports and data, trying to determine the keys to driving performance. We’re in constant meetings—far too many internal meetings, and consumed by all sorts of activity. These are important aspects of our jobs, well maybe not all the internal meetings and activities. But they’re not how we get things done. We’re accountable for producing results. Our only vehicle for producing results is through […]
“I’ve Never Ever Sold A Computer Or Piece Of Software”
Many of you know that I spent much of my career in IBM, starting as a sales person moving into the management ranks. Over that period of time, I think either the teams I led or I collected billions in revenue from the computers and software we shipped to our customers. In spite of those billions in revenue, I never sold a computer or software system. What I sold was: The ability to cut years and $10’s of millions in development costs in designing a new airplane or car. The ability to reduce waste and scrap in the foundry process […]
Just Good Enough–The Minimum Viable Sales/Marketing Strategy
Anyone familiar with the work of Eric Ries in the Lean Startup or Steve Blank’s books know the concept of the Minimum Viable Product. Their works focus on the need to for rapid experimentation, learning, and improvement in bringing new products to the markets. For years, I’ve been a proponent of “Just Good Enough,” as a sales or marketing strategy. Perhaps in today’s context, Just Good Enough might be called The Minimum Viable Sales/Marketing Strategy. Too often, I think we fail to change and adapt rapidly enough. We’re a business culture of careful planning, risk avoidance, fear of making mistakes, […]