Jeff Nock Highlights Importance of Partnership Development

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Branding, sales, and marketing expert Jeff Nock outlines the partnership development process and its importance in business.

 

A successful Iowa City-based businessman and founder of Prescient Consulting, Jeff Nock boasts a demonstrated history of growing established companies, startups, and nonprofit organizations alike. Here, business consultant Nock outlines the importance of partnership development.

 

“The essence of partnership development is that businesses execute their core competencies in-house and partner for everything else,” explains Nock, founder and CEO of Prescient Consulting, LLC, based in Iowa City, Iowa. 

 

Partner development or partnership development is a so-called customer-centric approach to business development. According to Jeff Nock, the process draws from the customer development framework popularized by Steve Blank, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur based in Pescadero, California. “Blank is best known,” adds Nock, “for being a national advocate for the Business Model Canvas, of which Partnerhips Development is a key component.”

 

The Business Model Canvas process recognized, and continues to recognize, that startups and early stage companies  are not merely smaller versions of large businesses, but rather that they require their own set of tools and processes to be successful.

 

Partnership development  is where companies collaborate with other companies to round out their product or service offering. For example, a retail company may have many locations and be excellent at sourcing products and selling products but they are not good at transport logistics. So they partner with an outside trucking logistics company to move equipment and merchandise from store to store. “Partnership development relies on creating win/win scenarios where the two partners together bring forward a better product or service than the one company can by itself,” Nock explains, “the value add creates higher demand from customers .”

 

Jeff Nock has previously written at length on topics ranging from business plan development, the concept of social entrepreneurship, and market analysis, to the value of conducting periodic SWOT analyses, internal operational efficiencies, the importance of evolving culture within a company, and leadership team development.

 

Nock most recently spoke, however, about the importance of brand consulting strategies. According to the expert, typically, when starting out, small businesses fail to prioritize the resources needed to establish an effective brand. This happens, Jeff Nock suggests, because resources—during the early stages—are often put predominantly into working on product development and sales relationships. “Many companies, particularly in the technology space, focus on what their product does,” says Nock. “Prospective clients, though, want to know what that product can do for them,” reveals the Iowa-based business consultant.  

 

Nock and his firm, Prescient Consulting, LLC, are based in the Johnson County city of Iowa City, Iowa. Home of the University of Iowa and the state’s fifth-largest city, it’s also the county seat of Johnson County. “The largest employer here in Iowa City by a significant margin is the University of Iowa,” reveals Nock, “followed by the Iowa City Community School District and the Iowa City VA Medical Center.”

 

“Iowa City,” he adds, wrapping up, “has also previously been named the third Best Small Metropolitan Area in the United States by famous bi-weekly business magazine, Forbes.”

 

Founder and CEO of Prescient Consulting, LLC, based in Iowa City, Iowa, Jeff Nock boasts a demonstrated history of growing nonprofit organizations, startups, and established companies alike. Skilled in business and strategic planning, branding, sales, and marketing, now-established Iowa resident Nock also holds a master’s degree in management from Colorado’s Regis University and is a specialist in management development. To learn more, visit https://prescient.us/.

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