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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
Stop Spending So Much Time Coaching The Bottom Of The Funnel
It’s approaching the end of the month and quarter. Everywhere I turn, people are focused on closing deals– focused on making the quarterly numbers. I sit in lot of reviews, managers and sales people are focused on deals at the bottom of the funnel. “How do we close this deal, what do we have to do to win, how do we get it this month?” The focus seems to be exclusively at the bottom of the funnel. It’s as though no other opportunity exists. This month will pass, we’ll enter a new month. Guess what happens—you’ve got it, the focus […]
No Room For Farmers!
Sales people are often described as Hunters or Farmers. Hunters have been characterized as chasing after new customers and new opportunities. Farmers focus on nurturing established accounts, keeping loyal customers, growing the business primarily through servicing the customer and growing the relationship. I’m not sure that model has ever been appropriate, but in today’s world of value creation, the model falls far short of what our customers need and what our own organizations need. Everybody Hunts! It’s the responsibility of each sales person to constantly develop their territories–whether it’s an industry segment, a geographic region, or a named account, everyone […]
Coaching–It’s Not About Giving The “Answer”
Coaching is critical to improving performance–regardless the role we are in. Professional athletes rely on coaches to improve their performance, to help them achieve things they hadn’t been able to do before. Musicians, actors, speakers all rely on coaches. Listen to their conversations, though. They are different than we might imagine. These are people who are top performers, they aren’t looking for “the answer.” At their level of performance, the answers don’t exist–the coaching ends up being a process of discovery–both on the part of the coachee and the coach. They learn and grow together. We talk about coaching in […]
With No Road Map Or GPS, We Lose Our Way
Imagine you are in a new city. You’ve just landed at the airport, you have just enough time to drive to a critical meeting with a customer, but you have no road map or GPS. Sure you can follow road signs, but sometimes, that’s a little tenuous. You have to proceed slowly, cautiously. Sometimes you make a wrong turn and have to retrace some of your steps–all the while, losing precious time. You worry that you might be late. Clearly, none of us would do that if we had a short amount of time to get to a critical meeting. […]
Struggling With Intolerance
The other day, my friend Jill Konrath wrote a compelling post, Silence Is Complicity. Please make sure you read it. The post resulted in an email discussion between Jill and me on the topic of Intolerance. In the national media, we are pummeled by pundits spewing messages of intolerance. Whether they wrap themselves in their country’s flag, claiming patriotism, or in the “rightness” of their issue, or claiming a religious position, or are just plain mean; we’re surrounded by intolerance. Their messages are nothing but poison. These people refuse to recognize other points of view, other ideas, and positions. Through […]
Sales, Marketing, Big Data, and Stories
Many pundits, including me, believe predictive analytics and big data are becoming the “killer apps” for sales and marketing. Developing deep understanding of our customers, being able to intercept them when they have a higher propensity to buy will become a key tool for sales and marketing. Presenting value in terms of hard, compelling analysis is a critical element of most complex B2B deals. Developing sales and marketing capabilities in being data driven, both in better targeting market and customers and in helping quantify value in working with customers is a critical skill. I’ve written often abou how important this […]