Partners in EXCELLENCE - Making a Difference
Sales Performance
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
Results are about performance. Sustained great results is about maximizing performance over time. The foundation to great performance lies in purpose, culture, values, and leadership. Performing well s developing the right strategies, the right organizational structures, putting the right talent in place, identifying the right processes, programs, systems, tools and metrics. Finally, it is about consistent execution. It’s about organizational and individual habit formation.
We work with clients in all aspects of maximizing performance. Whether it is developing strategies, recommending programs, putting the right structures and talent in place. Developing and implementing the right processes, systems and tools.
It may involve assessing current capabilities, both organizational and individual. Or assessing market and industry changes, developing recommendations for responding to those changes.
Finally, it’s about consistent execution. Training people in what needs to be done and best practices in doing these things. Measuring progress, putting corrective actions in place.
We are a collection of operations focused executives, working with our clients in developing their strategies, putting everything in place to implement those strategies, developing and supporting the change management efforts, supporting and refining the execution, then continuing to refine these to drive constant improvement.
Our goal is to help individuals and organizations to OutPeform their competition.
Sales Performance Posts
Busy Or Productive?
Early in my career, I kept hearing senior leaders saying something to the effect of, “If I want to get something done, I’m going to give it to the busiest person in my organization….” I’m not quite quoting it in the right context, at the time, the busiest people seemed to be the most productive […]
“This Is Just The Way Things Are…….”
I have to confess huge frustration with too many of the conversations I see in my social feeds. People take a position, leveraging (perhaps cherry picking) data to support their premises. While, their arguments make sense–obviously, they’ve structured them to make sense, but they are fundamentally flawed. Most of the time, they are just defenses […]
More Meetings Or Better Meetings?
O Meetings are critical to achieving our performance goals! It is through these meeting, whether F2F, virtual, phone, that we engage our customers, helping them navigate their buying/problem solving process. So it stands to reason, that more meetings would drive higher levels of performance. To increase our attainment, we just need to conduct more meetings. […]
The “CEO Card……”
I’ve been reading a number of articles about how win rates skyrocket when you get a very senior exec or founder involved in a sales opportunity. Sometimes opening a deal, sometimes in the final stages of a deal. These experts expound on how to get these exalted people involved in deals to drive executives involved […]
Do Your People Look Forward To Meeting With You?
If you are a manager, sit down, swallow hard, ask yourself this question: “Do your people actually look forward to meeting with you?” Perhaps ask yourself, “Do you look forward to meeting with your manager?” Alternatively, “Do they look forward to taking you on a customer call?” If you and your people are like 70% […]
Win Rates And Prospecting
Despite YoY plummeting win rates, based on my feeds, the biggest challenge facing sellers is not winning, but seems to be prospecting, engaging customers in conversations, hopefully finding and qualifying new opportunities. The data seems to support this, customers saying they don’t want to talk to sellers, outreaches to get a single response are 7-10 […]
Improving Win Rates!
Win rates are critical to driving performance and achieving our goals. Win rates are critical to our understanding of our pipelines. We leverage them to help us understand whether we are working a sufficient volume high quality opportunities to achieve our goals. The higher our win rates, the more we shift the pipeline numbers in […]
What If Failure Was An Option?
We never, purposefully, set out to fail. But our fear of failure prevents us from learning, improving, and growing. This fear of failure, whether self or organizationally imposed, actually condemns us to more failures over time. We create all sorts of mantras, suggesting we don’t fear failure. “Fail fast, fail often!” “Fail forward.” “Move fast […]
“Where Do Your People Want To Be Taken?”
Ask yourself a question, “Are you taking your people where they want/need to be taken?” Too often, we tend to focus on where we need to go/what we want to accomplish, but we fail in engaging our people as effectively, taking them where they need to be taken. Recently, I’ve had a fascinating experience working […]
Moving To “Problem Solving”
We seem to be wired to react and respond. When we encounter a problem, we immediately jump on it doing what we can do to correct it, getting back on course. It seems like a game of business/selling “whack a mole.” A problem pops up here, we put a fix in place, another one appears […]
Performance Quotes
““Dave helped us translate our strategic planning process from an annual exercise into the development of a plan the whole organization could get behind and execute. With Dave's support, the team came together and established a clear focus and priorities. The team felt the process was valuable in developing a pragmatic plan, focused on executing those things most critical to achieving the objectives our leadership team had established. Finally, the process established a solid framework for future strategic plans. Dave not only delivered on his commitments but delivered more than was expected.” Vice President Strategy and Planning
“I got a recommendation from a business colleague to reach out to Dave regarding our sales process for our startup. So I did and shot out an email where I asked for some tips on how to better leverage our sales process. Dave responded the same day where he asked if we could hop on a call, and of course, I was a bit amazed at his willingness to go head-on with our current challenges. During our conversations, I told him about a recent deal that had stalled and asked if he had any advice on how to get in a better position moving forward. He gave me some good advice and I also got two action points I could execute immediately. The following day I had a client meeting where I held a presentation and I took one of the action points into that meeting. After the presentation was completed I got the deal, and the client highlighted the expertise we had shown with our offer. Dave’s recommendation was perhaps the one thing I felt was the game changer from what we had done in the past.” Eivind Jonassen, Cofounder and CEO
“As a result of the program on Value Propositions, we have turned around and closed sales of more than $60 million within 45 days of implementing the principles you taught us.” Senior Vice President of Global Sales
“We brought David into our company to help us with our sales and go-to market strategies. His thoughtful and systematic approach exposed areas for improvement which resulted with an improved plan. All our employees benefited, especially when each of our team members shared their knowledge and practical experience across our group. We ended up a stronger, more cohesive and focused team due to David's leadership.” Ray Connelly, Vice President of Supplier Strategy
"Partners In EXCELLENCE differentiate themselves from other consulting firms we've used by providing practical implementable deliverables and then providing support and guidance during execution. Most consultants use a canned, one-size-fits-all methodology…. Because Dave Brock has real world experience in sales, marketing and management, his recommendations are tailored to his client's environment and are readily implemented." Vice President, Marketing
“In the past couple of years David has been a critical mentor, coach and partner to me. Throughout our engagements we together developed the Sales Execution Framework (SEF) which has been foundational for the continuous personal and professional development of my team, especially in the areas sales process mechanics, sales process, sales methodology and our operating system. Hands down this is the main reason why we realized high double digit profitable growth in the past couple of years and are confident we can sustain that in the years to come" Rene Voorhorst, Senior Head Global Account Management