Dear Outlook, Gmail, and developers of all email systems. I have a feature request. Actually, it’s a feature removal request. I think it will improve the productivity of all email users, and how they value your tools. Please remove the “Reply All,” feature. I’m just about to join a meeting of more than 300 people. […]
Dave Brock
Are You Confident Enough In Your Value Not To Discount?
Discounting has reached Pandemic levels. It used to be something we used as a last resort, and only under extreme duress. Today, responding to a prospecting call earns a discount. Proposals come with a price and then either an automatically applied discount, or hints at a discount. Something like, “Buy by the end of the […]
The Power Of Role Playing
You are probably shocked. “Dave doesn’t write about this stuff, he usually writes about much bigger issues.” Actually, conducting role plays has been a powerful tool that we use both in our consulting, training, and coaching. I don’t think we use them enough. Control the Stage Fright There are a lot of tools that offer […]
Are You Really Differentiated?
We all know the importance of differentiation. If we aren’t differentiated from the alternatives, how does the customer choose? If we can’t create differentiation, price becomes the differentiator. Years ago, the primary differentiator seemed to be our products/solutions. We sought to demonstrate the superiority of our offers by the capabilities we offered in our solutions. […]
Thinking About Diversity And Inclusion
The NY Times had a fascinating article: “Faces Of Power, 80% Are White As The Country Gets More Diverse.” There were a couple of interesting data points: Of the 25 highest value publicly traded companies in the US, only 6 were people of color, none were women. In the Fortune 500, there were only 4 […]
What 95% Of Meetings Miss
I spend much of my time in meetings with clients and their customers. Since the pandemic, it seems I have more meetings on my calendar, starting early in the morning running into the afternoon. I know we are supposed to complain about how much time we waste in meetings, frankly that’s not my experience. One, […]
“Manage And Coach By Results…..”
I read an article about how to be a successful sales manager. One of the pieces of “insight” was to manage and coach by results versus micromanaging or counting activities. He goes on to say, “people will find their own path to the target…..” Well, yes, but… There are a lot of problems with the […]
The Five “Whys”
The “5 Whys” is a tool developed decades ago, attributed to Sakichi Toyoda in developing the Toyota Production System. Anyone involved in TQM or Lean knows about the “5 Whys,” and how to leverage them. It’s one of the most powerful collaborative tools to help us help our customers learn and think differently. It’s the […]
Want to Sell Effectively? Stop Talking!
So much of our training and our engagement strategies involve our talking. We’re taught how to pitch our solutions. We’re given scripts outlining what we should say to our customers. As managers, we too often get into “tell” mode. Even when we ask questions, they are carefully constructed to elicit the answers we want. Alternatively, […]
Coaching The Un-coachable
I had the honor of participating in a webcast on coaching, with Lori Richardson, Jason Jordan, and Mike Kunkle. A question that rarely comes up was, “What do you do if a person is un-coachable?” This is one area of coaching where I tend to be pretty hard-nosed, but I believe the following: If a […]
