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
I Want To Buy, I Just Don’t Want To Pay
This is a funny, but sometimes all too true video.Next Tuesday, June 2, at 1:00 PM EDT, Niall Devitt and I are presenting a webinar sponsored by Top Sales Experts: The Good News, Customers Want To Buy; The Bad News, They Can’t Find The Funding. We address the very issue raised in this video and provide a foundation to help you find solutions to this issue. Make sure you sign up and participate.
I Just Don’t Have Time To Coach! A Crisis In People Development.
It’s a familiar complaint. We’re all time poor, as a result of cutbacks, expansion in spans of control, expansion of job responsibilities, and the list never ends. Every year I talk to 100’s of sales managers and executives. They know they need to spend more time coaching and developing their people, but they just can’t find the time to do it. This problem is more serious than many might think. Two years ago, we conducted a survey of sales managers. In one question, we asked them how frequently they had coaching/mentoring meetings with their people. For companies having revenue of […]
How We Express Ourselves, Our Words Count!
Any of you who have followed me know that one of my soapboxes is raising the level of professionalism with sales people. Too often, it seems we take one step forward and too giant steps backwards. I hate to criticize other bloggers, but I just saw something at BNET that has caused me to comment. The title is “Five Ways To Lure Recession Battered Customers.” The article has some good concepts, but I do get concerned about some of the words used both in the title and in the article. This article is a great example of what all of […]
Leadership and Narcissism
Narcissistic Leaders, we’ve seen too many of them. In good times, their visions can be compelling. They can be charismatic, inspiring followers. Those positive characteristics are overshadowed by their terrible weaknesses—and these challenging times are likely to accentuate these weaknesses. Ben Dattner, of Dattner Consulting, has an outstanding summary of characteristics of narcissistic managers. These include: 1. Grandiose sense of self importance, tend to exaggerate achievements and talents, expect to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.2. Preoccupied with fantasize of unlimited success, power, brilliance.3. Believes he/she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by or associate with […]
Can Someone Help Me Diagnose This Sales Call? I Don’t Get It.
It’s 7:00am, I’m busy disposing of email and getting my day started. I’m already on my second cup of coffee, the phone rings….. Most of my clients and colleagues know I start my day in the “office” at 5:00am, so I am anticipating it is one of them. Dave: Hello, this is Dave Brock.Other Party (OP): May I speak to your office manager?Dave: Well, my name is Dave Brock, I own the company so I guess I’m the office manager, how can I help you?OP: I’m John Doe from XYZ company and I’d like to know when your office hours […]
Should Sales Professionals Be Certified?
First let’s agree that many sales professionals (and others) are certifiable. My wife reminds me of this with every crazy idea I come up with. But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about whether there should be a certification process for sales professionals. Over the past week, I’ve raised a lot of debate with my Posts On Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession: Part 1: Sales issues. Part 2: General business/organizational issues thatimpact sales effectiveness. Part 3: Recommendations for the future. Over at The Customer Collective, Donal Daly of the TAS Group, suggested we look […]