I once heard a sales motivational speaker talk about excuses salespeople make for not selling. He had a routine that went something like this. You can never sell on Monday, people are just getting back to work, and they don’t want to be bothered with talking to a salesperson. They will get aggravated if you […]
Sales Is A Team Effort
Look, let’s face it, it’s much too easy to blame the salespeople for a lack of sales. So many times, I have heard frustrated operations people blame the sales team for a lack of adequate bookings. But ironically, if their sales team starts booking more sales, they will say that the sales team just got […]
It’s Time To Fail
The kindergarten teacher is looking over the shoulder of a little girl drawing a picture. When she asks the little girl what she is drawing, the little girl answers, “I am drawing a picture of God.” The teacher, surprised, says, “But no one knows what God looks like.” The little girl replies, “They will […]
Allow Me To Be Generous
I just reread a book titled The Go Giver: A little story about a powerful business idea. Full disclosure this was the third time I read this book and I plan to read it annually going forward. It’s not a big book, only about one hundred and fifty pages (my kind of book!), but it […]
Getting Intimate With Your Customers
No, relax, it’s not what you think. This is about getting so close to your customers that you have a clear and concise understanding of what they need from a great supplier!. Too often we feel as if all that matters to our customers is price and yes, sometimes delivery but for the most part, […]
Use Your Brain Trust
Guess what? In any company the front office does not have a monopoly on brains and ideas. For some reason we think that once someone crosses the line into the front office, she or he is the only one who can think. Too many times people want people to just “shut up and do their […]
Things Are Looking Up!
Looking forward to the future Have you thought about that much? Most of the companies I know have led “led lives of desperation,” to quote my fellow New Englander Henry David Thoreau. Most of the time more concerned about making payroll than buying that new piece of equipment, more worried about pesky Quality issues than […]
Managing The Extraordinary
Do these names mean anything to you? Marc Bulger, Chad Pennington, Tee Martin, and Giovanni Carmazzi. To refresh your memory, they were the four quarterbacks that were chosen before Tom Brady was drafted by the New England Patriots. On paper they looked better than Brady in every way. According to the powers that be in […]
The Best Customer Service
For the past week I have put my business books on the shelf in favor of books about kindness. Books with titles like; Random Acts of Kindness: How to Make it a Better World, Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think and Act in Kindness and Hope Kind Love: Channel Kindness, […]
Write Your Company’s Eulogy
Really, write your own company’s eulogy. I got the idea from Ron Lovett, the author of the book Brand Scaling Culture. I read the book last week and this suggestion has stayed with me ever since. Think about this. If your company died or disappeared one day, what would your customers say? Would they be […]