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
Process is the Foundation for Agility/Nimbleness
We want to be flexible, nimble, able to adapt to the circumstances, leap on an opportunity, respond quickly. We abhor process since that constrains our creativity and ability to innovate. Too often, when I talk…
Confusing Simplification with Simplistic
Both we, our customers, our markets, our worlds are getting more and more complex. We face rapid change/disruption, overwhelm/overload, risk/uncertainty, turmoil, constantly shifting focus/priorities/agendas. In the face of this, we struggle to respond, whether it’s…
How Does Your Customer Make Money?
Can you answer the question, “How does you customer make money?” By that, I don’t mean at a superficial level, like, “Well, dugghh, Dave, they sell stuff……” I mean really understanding your customer’s business. It…
The Art of the Bluff
I was stunned and appalled to read an article sponsored by a major sales publication promoting the “Art of the bluff.” The author was cautious to highlight the negative connotations around bluffing—the feeling of manipulation,…
Initiative Overload
Individually and organizationally, we are obsessed with getting things done. It’s important, it’s how we learn, grow, and achieve. Too often, however, this obsession is dysfunctional. We overload ourselves and our organizations with too many…
How Performance Reviews Can Kill Organizational Culture
I’m an unabashed fan of Shane Parrish and the Farnam Street Blog. I study everything they publish, listen to every podcast, read every article and book they reference. It is the single smartest site I…
Sales Managers “Closing Business”
I was struggling to meet with a sales manager. He really wanted to talk, we had critical issues he had asked for help in addressing. He kept postponing our calls, “Dave, I’m running all out,…
Deal Strategies: Helping the Customer Buy
Recently I wrote, “What If We Kept The Target Close Date Sacred?” It focused on improving our pipeline management, discipline, and integrity. But the way we address these issues is in our deal strategies and…
The Pipeline Review
I was meeting with a client, we were doing the first pipeline review as part of their implementation of the Sales Execution Framework. Pipeline reviews are a great starting point for the process, a good…
What About the Forecast?
Forecasting is important to our business, we spend a lot of time (often too much) on forecasts. But too often, we get forecasting wrong. Some observations: We strive for forecast accuracy, but we will never…