Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Blog
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
Performance Management Can’t Be Delegated Or Abdicated!
A key aspect of the manager’s job is performance management. Surprisingly, I seem to run across a fair number “managers” that don’t own this responsibility. They don’t do it, or try to delegate it so someone else. There are various categories of managers that really don’t manage performance: The manager, trapped behind a desk, managing paperwork, internal bureaucracy, not connected with the field. There’s the “super-person” manager–the one’s that know how to do deals better then anyone else. Rather than coaching and strategizing, they swoop in, pushing the sales person to the side, and do the deal themselves. There’s the […]
We Are Who We Hire
The other day I received a call from a troubled CEO. He ran a small company. “My sales people aren’t producing results! My sales manager is worthless! Can you help me straighten this out?” After asking a few questions and probing a little further, I politely declined, I made some excuse and suggested he find someone else. I didn’t take the project because as I spoke to him, I discovered the root problem was the CEO. Yes, there was a problem with the people. They didn’t have the skills, they didn’t have the attributes, there were a lot of problems. […]
Performance Management Friday — It’s Not About The Numbers
Today, I want to take a pause in this series. Over the past couple of months, each Friday, we’ve looked at different performance metrics. We’ve focused on establishing numbers and goals for these metrics. It’s worth taking some time to reconfirm what we are doing and why. Too often, I see sales people and managers making mistakes–everything is about the number or goal itself. The focus becomes–have we made our weekly telephone call goal? Have we met our target for the right number of meetings? When the focus starts to be on achieving the goal, then things can start going […]
Hanging Out
I was on my bike last weekend, riding to the beach to hang out with my nephew. He’s a really cool guy, a sophomore in college, world class sailor, a surfer-dude. What makes him even cooler, is he let’s me hang out with he and his friends every once in a while. Saturday was one of those days, I was going to meet them at the regular surfing spot. As I was riding down to the beach, the phone rang, it was the “family ring” so I stopped and answered it. “Hey Uncle Dave, we’re at a new beach, the […]
Performance Management Friday — Getting Personal
For this week’s Performance Management discussion, I’m shifting gears quite a bit. It’s a topic few sales people think about as an aspect of managing their personal performance, but it’s critical. All the best sales people I’ve met spend time setting specific goals in this area. I’d like to focus this discussion on Personal Development. Too often, sales people surrender their personal development to whatever the company does—the annual sales training meeting, tools or resources on internal websites. If their managers are doing a good job in coaching, the manager may recommend resources they might use to improve their skills […]
Wishful Thinking And Intent
Wishful thinking and intent can look a lot like the same thing. They are similar in that they focus on a future goal or outcome. Something like, “Winning the deal,” “Making the quota,” “Beating the competition.” After that, the similarity ends. See wishful thinking has no plan, no action, no execution behind it. Intent is focused. There’s a plan and a strategy. There’s fierce execution of that plan. There’s vicious focus–people with intention will not let anything get in the way of their attainment of the goal. There’s pragmatism and adaptability—those with intention know they can change anything about their […]