Dave Brock

Dave Brock is the founder of Partners in EXCELLENCE, a consulting and services company helping to improve the effectiveness of business professionals with strategy development, organizational planning, and implementation. Dave has spent his career working for and with high performance organizations, ranging from the Fortune 25 to startups, including companies such as IBM, HP, Nokia, AT&T, Microsoft, General Electric, and many, many more. The work Dave does with business strategies is closely tied to personal effectiveness of the people in the organization. As a result, Dave is deeply involved in the development of a number of training and coaching programs.

Latest

Shallowness and Networking

It’s clear we’re in a frenzy of networking and connecting. There seems to be a rush to establish connections, friends, whatever. People are reaching out, connecting, racking up the numbers. They’re using every channel possible—LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google +, and more. But then there’s this odd phenomena.

Sometimes Revenue Is the Wrong Sales Metric

Revenue is important! The top sales executive needs to be accountable for producing the expected revenue. But the top sales executive is also accountable for executing the corporate strategy. Sometimes to do both, we have to change the way we measure (and compensate) sales people. Sometimes revenue quotas are the wrong thing.

We Misunderstand Lean—But It Is So Important!

Lean has huge traction in about every part of organizations except for sales and marketing. But if you really understand Lean, it becomes compelling for sales and marketing, purely because of the clarity, focus, and simplicity it drives.

Dumbing Things Down Versus Radical Simplification

Our worlds are too complex; we seem to keep piling things onto everything we’ve done in the past. Too often, however, in response to this complexity and all the “tools” that have been put in place to manage it, instead of seeking simplification we dumb things down.

Do You Understand Your Differentiation? Does Your Customer?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve written a number of posts about Value Propositions and Pricing. They’ve generated a lot of conversation in various venues. One of the things that’s struck me is the lack of discussion on differentiation.

Deal Value or Buyer Value?

Focusing on deal value colors our strategies and focus. However subtly, everything becomes “what we get from the deal.” But we get nothing unless the buyer gets superior value from our solution and chooses it. So deal value is meaningless unless we understand buyer value.

“I Need An Excuse to Get Back Into the Customer”

I hear it all the time: “I need an excuse to get back into the customer.” Creating excuses to get back into the customer is nothing but old sales mythology. It does nothing to serve us or the customer.

Don’t Confuse Buying and Selling!

Buyers and sellers are different sides of the same coin. Without each other, it is difficult to achieve our goals. Effective buying and selling has to be aligned to a common goal—driven by the customer. But we can’t confuse our roles.