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DNA of Sales EXCELLENCE · Sales Pipeline Radio

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All right, we are live again here on Sales Pipeline Radio.
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Thank you so much for joining us.
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I'm your host Matt Heinz.
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Welcome to another episode.
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If you are… Let's see, let's do some housekeeping.
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senator Dave Brock, we can get to those.
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Just put it in.
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We will be able to see those, we can read those, we can reference
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you, we can put you on screen.
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Over a quarter million people have downloaded Sales Pipeline Radio
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and checked out various episodes.
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I don't know what number we're at, Dave.
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I think we're somewhere in the 400s, maybe the 500s.
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We need to probably keep better track of that.
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But every episode of Sales Pipeline Radio, past, present, and future are always
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available at salespipelineradio.com.
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Dave's one of those guys that we should probably just have… You could be,
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like, the… You, could be the, the Ed McMahon of, of- … Sales Pipeline
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Radio, of Coffee with Brent and Matt.
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It would be…
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It would make all of our content richer.
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Dave Brock, thank you so much for joining us.
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Oh, it's such a privilege, and when you tell me those
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numbers, I'm just stunned by it.
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That's fantastic.
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That's over time, right?
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That's not every week.
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But it's, it's a pretty good… Yeah, we're…I think it's testament
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to, like, when you do something like this, just keep doing it.
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Just keep showing up.
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I am, the older I get and the more mistakes I make, the more I realize,
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most of life, most of business is showing up and following up.
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And if you do both of those on a regular basis, you're probably gonna be okay.
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You're both getting older and you make lots of mistakes, so it's, you're really
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learning a huge amount, so as I do.
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My learning is accelerating- as both of those things accelerate, too.
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Yeah, no, absolutely.
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All right.
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So court jester, frequent critic, he's kinda the guy in the back of the
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Muppets Theater as well sometimes.
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And we always know, Brent- when Brent and I do our show, we always know
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we've had a good show when a couple of minutes after we end, we get a
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text from Dave saying, "Hey, you okay?
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You doing okay?
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You okay?" But, hey, one of the questions I've always had for you.
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Dave is the founder of, the Partners for EXCELLENCE.
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Excellence is always all caps from you.
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Yeah.
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Like, how did that start?
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Why is that?
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It's something… years ago when I started the company, I wanted to just figure out,
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how do I get people to focus on that?
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And so I just started doing all caps with it.
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I may have had some sort of marketing guru.
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It was long before I knew you.
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It was probably long before you were born.
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But,
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I may have had some marketing guru that says, "Hey, from a branding point of
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view, that kind of, is interesting."
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But, now, there's an interesting contrast to that.
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The original website, and if you look at my email, my email
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is @E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-C.com.
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That's right.
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Which means I'm not quite excellent yet.
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Okay.
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So was, that intentional or was that…
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No, it, was interesting.
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I, bought the domains and everything like that in, I think 1991.
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And literally two months before I did that, somebody
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bought the full excellence.com.
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Interestingly… And, I went to try and buy it, and it's been at various times
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somewhere between $5 and $20 million.
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But interestingly, it's never been used.
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You could probably change at this point to partnersinexcellence.ai,
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and that would like triple the valuation of your business instantly.
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Absolutely, and it would be very accurate because I strive for excellence,
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and everything I do is artificial.
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So, it, probably is very appropriate.
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Yeah, Dave's not even here, by the way.
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This episode is live with Dave's AI superhuman.
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Dave's on a beach somewhere, but, we'll, see if you can tell.
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If there's some tells that this isn't the real Dave Brock.
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So, actually,
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How many Dave Brocks do I have?
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That's, 17.
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So if, you, question again, follow-up on the excellence.
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Excellence is a broad word that means a lot of things to a lot of people.
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What do you mean when you say excellence?
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And excellence does mean and should mean a different thing to every, every person.
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So what I really mean is how do we achieve our own full potential, whether
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it's us as individuals or, us as organizations, is how do we achieve our
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potential and what we could achieve?
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And that, that standard is and should be different for everybody else.
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So if we start trying to compare ourselves, if I start comparing myself
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to you or Brent as examples, I'll never achieve the levels that you do.
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But I, still work to achieve the full… you can tell I'm a salesperson
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'cause I do all those things.
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But-
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Yeah
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… But, I work to achieve my full potential in what I'm trying to
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do, what my purpose is and so on.
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So and that, that question's come up quite a bit with the books recently,
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is, is there the same standard for excellence for everybody?
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And it's absolutely different.
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But it, what I really wanna do is provoke people to think of am I just
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getting by and doing good enough?
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And I may be making my numbers and doing all that kind of thing,
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or could I achieve so much more?
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And I really wanna incite people to achieve so much more.
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I like that definition.
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I mean, to a certain point, excellence is in the eye of the beholder, right?
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Exactly.
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I think everyone has an idea of what they think excellence is that
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they see, as well as what excellence is in terms of what they produce.
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So I think it was Henry Kissinger, I've heard this from a few different
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people, be like when someone would bring him a report, he'd, before he
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even looked at it, he'd look and say, "Is this your best work?" And he said
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at least half the time they would just turn around and it was, "Okay, fine.
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I'm gonna go do my best work." It's so easy, especially given how quickly the
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world works, and given that we can have Claude write anything for us, I think
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it's become easier just to- mail it in,
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That's exactly it, is, I, for, years, but particularly in the
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last, year, I've been talking about how we're dedicated to mediocrity.
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And I think then, we kinda look around and say, "We're doing just as well or
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just as, as poorly as everybody else. Why should I do more?" But then again, I, look
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at it and say we're cheating ourselves or we're cheating our organizations
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because we could do so much more.
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Yeah.
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and I think it stands out.
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And so much more doesn't always have to be like 3 times, 10 times as much.
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But sometimes it just, it's just showing that you cared, showing
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that you put yourself into it, showing that you didn't half-ass it.
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And that doesn't mean, there's a point of diminishing returns I think on that, but I
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actually think like the ceiling is rising as the floor is rising and, but the space
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in between is getting much, much wider.
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And so your ability to stand out and differentiate, I think that opportunity
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just grows now and moving forward.
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And that attribute of caring is so important, so
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foundational and, I look at it.
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There are, several different dimensions of caring.
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One is caring about yourself.
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Are you doing what you could be doing?
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Are you achieving your potential?
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Are you do, are you doing something that contributes to your purpose?
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Another part is caring about your organization.
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Is, am I contributing as much as I can to my organization?
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And is my organization doing, living up to its full potential?
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And the next part is caring about your customers.
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Is, do I really care about them and their success?
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And am I doing things that can help them more effectively or more
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quickly achieve their success?
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And these are all interlaced.
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And if we don't care, then we don't show up the way we should show up.
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Life lessons and existential observations on Sales Pipeline Radio
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today with our guest, Dave Brock.
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He is the founder of, consulting firm Partners in EXCELLENCE.
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we were gonna talk today a little bit about the DNA of sales excellence.
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And I think it's a good topic.
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We've known each other for a long time, at least I think 15 years, and, the
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tactics of selling have evolved over time.
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But the, I, it's just like I tell marketers, I say "we got all these new
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tools and we got all these new tricks and everything," but the psychological
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foundations of buying and decision-making that, goes on, whether you're trying to
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decide, what kind of gum you wanna buy or what enterprise software you're gonna
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deploy, I think there's fundamentals there that I'm implying when I hear
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you say the DNA of sales excellence.
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So I'd love to have you- … what is that definition and what is included?
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So I have to give a little bit of background to it.
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For the, basically for my career I've been studying this, but for the last
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probably two, three years I've been really diving into it real deeply.
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And I start looking at things and I say, I get involved with lots of
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sales organizations in looking at new programs and things like that.
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What are new metrics we should do?
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What, how do we coach people more effectively?
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What are sales training programs?
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What are, programs to launch products and things like that?
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All these kinds of things.
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And what I started observing is, you can imagine, say, in an organization,
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you always see two distinct groups of people, one smaller than the other.
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They all have access to the same technology and tools.
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They're all selling the same products.
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They all have the same training and all those same kind of
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foundational-type things.
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But you always see there's a small group that consistently outperforms the other.
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And you start looking at saying what's causing that performance difference?
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You also see that organizationally, you see organizations with
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outstanding products, great people, and all those things, but you see
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some organizations consistently outperforming, other organizations.
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So I started diving in and said, "If they have all the same tools,
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the same technologies, the same products, same coaching, what's the
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difference?" And I started saying, it's all the behavioral elements-
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of things." And the behavioral elements of things that in, in,
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in my book, in, the first book on this, I, outlined it around eight.
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It's, caring, it's curiosity, it's customer centricity, it's
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accountability, it's the ability to deal with ambiguity and complexity,
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it's discipline, and it's purpose.
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And each one of those contributes in different ways to what you're doing,
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and I started seeing those are the characteristics that really set high
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performers out from individual performers.
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So then I started laying that as a background.
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Then the second thing I started doing is saying we have these mechanisms
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in organizations, call it training, programs, technology, coaching,
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metrics, those kinds of things.
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We tend to focus on those exclusively, and we're not getting
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the levels of performance we could.
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Then I started saying, there are these behavioral things." And you can
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see some organizations, that focus only on, say, curiosity and customer
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centricity and so on, but they don't have the other tools to help them.
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Yep.
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And I started saying, "These don't exist in isolation, but
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they exist working together."
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Yeah.
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And that's where I came up with the idea of DNA.
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If you think of two strands, one being the behavioral strand, one being the mechanism
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strand, and the real strength is how they fit together and complement each other.
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So for instance, right now I'm working with, a client on really
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developing a whole new set of metrics.
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And, as we start looking at the set of metrics, we say, "What are the
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underlying behaviors we have to be displaying to make these metrics really
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work?" And in this case, it turns out to be discipline and accountability.
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So as we're, we put that in place, we say, "What levels of discipline,
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what levels of accountability do we need to develop in our people, so that
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these metrics make sense to them and their work to achieve those metrics?"
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There's a…I love the way you're framing it around sort of accountability, right?
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Then there's a… there's a group accountability and a culture
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you can create in, in a sales organization, in a marketing team,
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in any, go to mark- any department.
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There's also that personal, there's that personal accountability
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and framing of "This is my job," versus, "This is who I am," right?
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I do sales versus I am a sales professional.
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And even if you, over your career, end up working in different organizations
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selling different products and services, you're representing your company
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and you're representing yourself.
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And so if you come, you don't have to have a big ego, but you, to come with, a high
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level of expectations for yourself and a high level of esteem for your customer
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and prospect, to treat them with respect and professionalism, the same way you
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would wanna be treated, I think there's some standards there that, I honestly, I
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think like in the age of AI and trying to automate sales workflows left and right,
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especially for sales that require a high level of trust are really gonna stand out.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well and I think the accountability issue is so critical because we tend
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to be in a culture right now where we make excuses or we assign blame.
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Yeah.
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And that doesn't solve any kind of problems.
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We make mistakes, what we have to do is say, "I need to own up to that
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mistake. But what I wanna do is I wanna figure out how not to make it again."
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Yep.
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And how to improve and, those kinds of things.
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But… but it's so much easier, I see in a lot of the clients I work in, it's, so
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much easier to say, "Hey, our products suck." The comp-…I was in a call earlier
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today with a group, "The comp plans suck." And, all those kinds of things.
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And, I said, "You really need to take ownership and accountability over it."
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well and I think that, sometimes
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I think we're afraid of accepting or communicating that there's
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something we could personally have done better or different.
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I see this in marketing teams all the time when we're like, "We want…"
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If you pretend that everything's working great, no one's gonna believe that, right?
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I had a friend recently describe that as success theater, right?
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It's the slide deck and the board lighting that's "Here's everything
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that's going great." that, they're not there just to pat you on the back.
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They're there to help you solve problems.
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They know there are problems.
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There's always problems.
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So be honest about what's not working.
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Be honest about the things that you launched that didn't
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work out the way you wanted to.
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Because if you're honest and accountable about that, you'll
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have more trust and confidence with the next thing you wanna do.
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And frankly, if you aren't making some mistake, and not purposely
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making mistakes- … but if you aren't making some mistakes and
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getting your teeth kicked in on the way, you aren't pushing yourself
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as far as you could push yourself.
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And also, yeah.
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And I think that there's a difference between perfection and
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excellence there as well, right?
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Where I was in an organization once where the marketing leader said, this is years
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ago, before I started this, she said, "I expect flawless execution." I'm like, "I
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don't think that's possible," And so I'm all for setting a high level of excellence
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in terms of expectations, but excellence also means learning from your mistakes.
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It means being accountable for things that didn't work, right?
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And so I think to be open and honest about what that really
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means is, really important.
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Dave, we're already running out of time here.
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I knew we would.
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We should, literally we should just have the Dave Brock corner
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for Sales Pipeline Radio and/or Coffee with Brent, moving forward.
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What's something, as we head into the second half of this year, let's
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think about the conversations you're having with go-to-market teams, what's
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something you're excited about and what's something you're afraid of?
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What I'm excited about with a certain set of organizations, the type of
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clients I work with tend to be very innovative, high-performing organizations.
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What I'm really exciting about is how they're rethinking everything
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they do, in looking at AI.
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But they're doing it in a very different way than I see most people do.
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Most people are, looking at AI to say, "How can I get it to do the work for me?"
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Yeah.
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The people I'm working with say, "How do we completely restructure and imagine
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new things that we can do, and then where does AI contribute to that?"
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And none of us have the answers for that, so we're figuring it out in real time.
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And every day it changes because the capabilities of the tools.
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But that's what we're seeing is some breakthroughs with people that are
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just stunning and really exciting.
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And that just, that keeps me, waking up in the morning.
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I don't even need a cup of coffee 'cause I'm so excited about those things.
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What's something you're afraid of?
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I'm afraid of the easy button-
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which too many organizations do, and that's where we, start seeing these trends
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for mediocrity, is, now, for instance, and I'll keep on the AI bit too, is now
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we're looking at people that are replacing work that they're doing with AI agents.
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And so they're, accomplishing mediocrity at scale.
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The other thing that they're never doing is, should we even
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be doing this in the first place?
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Exactly.
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Yep.
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Yep.
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And, so, what we're do-, what I see people doing is with the easy
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button, this is very easy to do in AI.
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I can do it, in 15 minutes and have it manage my calendar, manage
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my research, send 10,000 highly personalized emails that say, "Dear
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occupant or current resident"-
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and probably to the wrong company.
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And, that just accelerates mediocrity and gets us so that we aren't
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achieving our full potential.
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I agree.
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So it's funny that you say that's something you're afraid of.
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I actually, I think the more companies that are producing mediocre work,
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the more companies that could, wanna follow the easy button, it's just
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gonna make us stand out, right?
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For those that still care, for those that put in the extra
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effort, those that still… like, use the tool, but make it you.
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And make it something that is still achieving a higher
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expectation of excellence.
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I would love for more people, in my space and our competitors to do that,
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'cause it'll just help us stand out more.
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Dave Brock, thank you so much for joining us.
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This is always a pleasure.
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It always goes too fast, but I appreciate you joining us.
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Well, thanks so much.
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I always have so much fun talking to you.
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And, if you get a chance to connect with the real Dave Brock on the beach, tell
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him I hope he's applying or reapplying sunscreen and staying hydrated.
20:17
And
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for everyone else who's watching, hanging out today, thanks so much for being
20:22
part of the show, for checking us out.
20:24
Thanks for, as always, for downloading, listening, watching Sales Pipeline Radio.
20:28
We'll be back next week with another great episode.
20:30
Until then, take care.
20:31
We'll see you soon.