Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
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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
The Power Of “Thank You!’
Last night, I was sitting in the living room, reading. The phone rang, no caller ID, but it was from an area I recognized, so I answered. It was Bill, an old friend and colleague. As we spoke, Bill said, “We first met about 35 years ago….” Bill was a product marketing guy in a company where I was CRO. He was one of the best product marketing people I’d ever met, deeply involved with customers and our sales teams. We had lots of discussions and occasional disagreements. I went on to form Partners In EXCELLENCE; Bill moved on to […]
CUSP, Leading by Serving, When Outcomes Matter Most
One of the biggest influences in my thinking and in writing Is “Good Enough” Good Enough, Mindsets and Behaviors for Sales Excellence is my good friend Mitch Little. In some ways, we are “brothers from separate mothers,” though he is far better at golf and photography than I am. Mitch just came out with a brilliant new book, based on his experiences in developing one of the highest performing sales organizations I have ever worked with. It’s called CUSP, Leading By Serving, When Outcomes Matter Most. Mitch, because he is wired to care and serve is offering this book in […]
Sale Excellence, Where Do You Start?
Since releasing Is ‘Good Enough’ Good Enough, I keep hearing the same question: “Where do I start?” I get it. The book lays out seven mindsets and behaviors for moving from mediocrity to excellence: Curiosity, Purpose, Accountability, Learning, Customer-Centricity, Embracing Change, and Discipline. It is overwhelming! It’s like being confronted with a map of the US, when all you want to do is plan today’s drive. Ironically, the search for the perfect starting point becomes its own form of going through the motions. You might spend weeks debating whether to work on Curiosity or Accountability, trying to find the “best […]
What Are You Willing To Struggle For?
Ask any salesperson if they want to hit the President’s Club, make more money, and build a strong career they are proud of. Everyone will immediately respond, “Of course! I want to be the top performer!” Nobody wants to be mediocre, but why do so many settle for it? Stated differently, we settle for mediocrity not because we lack ambition, but because we want the reward without the risk. We want the outcome without the grind of doing the work that excellence demands. Years ago, Mark Manson published a fascinating post, The Most Important Question Of Your Life. He suggests, […]
Why Do We Invest So Heavily In Losing?
Yes, we are almost at 2025 year-end. I suspect many are rushing to close those last few deals, hopefully making the number. But as we start looking at the New Year, I wanted to pose a question, something to think about as you start looking to the New Year and chasing a new set of numbers. Here it is, “Why do we invest so heavily in losing?” Your reaction is probably, “Dave, you are crazy, we are investing money to win and grow our business, how can you possibly say we are investing in losing?” I see budgets for the […]
Walking The Talk, Why I Refused To Settle…
It is easy to write about high performance; it is much harder to live it when things go wrong. I set a hard commitment to publish my new book. Is “Good Enough” Good Enough, this past Wednesday. But as the date approached, I realized I was staring at a 250-page unformatted manuscript and I was essentially out of time. The company I had hired to do this work had failed miserably. And perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention early in the project to see the troubling signs. But I was stuck and the clock was ticking. It would have been […]