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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
Hanging Out Where Our Customers Hang Out
I’ve been writing a several posts about social technologies and social selling (“Hiding” Behind Social Selling and What’s All This About Social Selling). One of the key points of the articles and the many great comments is, social selling and social technologies are different. Selling is social–regardless of the technology we use. Social technologies can expand and accelerate our ability to engage and connect in meaningful ways with customers. Usage of social platforms and technologies continues to skyrocket. There are many that say “Engagement is all about the web and social platforms, that’s where all the action is at, that’s […]
“Hiding” Behind Social Selling
The post, “What’s All This About Social Selling,” provoked a lot of reaction. As I started reading the discussions, I started thinking more. Do the “social tools,” make us less social? As you know from the article, I believe “social selling” or “social business” starts with a set of beliefs or values about how you want to connect with, engage, and create value for the customer and prospects. Selling has always been “social,” it’s always been about people connecting, engaging, creating value. The channels by which we connect change and technology enables this. But do the many of the social […]
What’s All This About Social Selling?
There’s a lot of talk about social selling. When you peel it back, it’s a lot of talk about technology–choose your favorite; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, and so forth. In theory, we’re all supposed to be Chattering, Yammering and Jiving. But is this what social selling is really about–technologies? Or is it about our customers? Is it about engaging customers in improving their business? Is it about helping them grow, improve, achieve their goals and dreams. Is it about creating value for them in every interchange? Is it about challenging them, getting them to think differently? Is it about earning […]
Sales People Do What You Measure And Compensate Them To Do!
I’m sure there are some snarky reactions, “Well thanks for the insight Dave, I never knew that?#!” Yeah, Yeah, we all know that, but here’s the real issue, “Are we measuring and compensating them to do the things we WANT them to do?” That’s where things start falling apart. My posts, Sometimes Revenue Is The Wrong Sales Metric and Conditions Of Employment have stirred a flood of comments and emails. I thought I’d expand the discussion here. Growing revenue, and profits, are key objectives of any organization. Simplistically, we think of sales as responsible for driving revenue growth. After all, […]
Sometimes Revenue Is The Wrong Sales Metric
Sales people are accountable for generating revenue—–Duuuuggghh! Ask a sales person what their primary goal is, they say: “I have to make my quota!” Ask them what that means and they say “I’m accountable for generating $X million in orders or revenue.” But sometimes revenue is the wrong metric. In just the past two weeks, I’ve been involved in half a dozen discussions about the challenges people were having with overall performance of the sales organization. Each of them was primarily because the most important goal for each sales person was revenue–and that was the wrong metric. I’ll share just one […]
Conditions Of Employment
A warning to my readers, I tend to be a little hard nosed every once in a while. This is one of those times. I’m reacting to a cumulative build up of a number of conversations about compensation planning, incentives, and “motivating” sales people. So many of the discussions focus on rewards and incentives for behaviors that should be conditions of continued employment. When we employ people, we expect certain behaviors. We expect they act ethically and with integrity. That they come into work on time, work regular hours. That they complete their reports, keep managers informed (dare I say, […]