The excitement of a new year! Turning over a new page. One year ends, and another begins. Isn’t that refreshing? Isn’t that a great feeling of renewal? Throwing out all of those old calendars, and hanging those new ones up on the way. Or, opening up that brand new date book for a symbolic, as […]
Where Will We Be in Five Years? Or Maybe Three?
Recently, a good friend of mine, an owner of a PCB shop in the U.S. ,asked for my thoughts on what the North American Market would look like in five years. Good question isn’t it? With everything going on in the world , it is a good time so stop, and take stock. So, after […]
Are You A True Salesperson?
The “It” Factor As this year ends, and the new year is almost upon us, we should all do a little soul searching, a little self-evaluation, to make sure we still have “it”. A “tune up” if you will, to make sure that we still have “it”. “It” being the thing that makes us great […]
Your PCB Customers And Respect
Times may have changed, but some things never do. The old adage that the customer is always right still stands. No matter how hard it is to accept, you have to live with that law if you want to stay in business. We all know that it is harder to respect the customer now than […]
Santa’s Leadership Secrets
Leadership advice from the big guy. Last week we talked about the bad guys. This week, we are going to talk about the leadership secrets of the big guy himself, since it is after all the season to be jolly, Santa Claus. These leadership tips come from a neat little book I just read by […]
3 Goals For Your Annual Sales Meeting
This is truly, the most important meeting your company will hold every year. It is the one time during the entire year where the team comes together and intentionally talks about business for the coming year. Besides the sales people presenting their slate of account plans, and their customer-by-customer month- by-month sales forecast, operations will […]
A Bit of Advice From The Bad Guys
What would Atilla the Hun do? Over the years we have turned to a number of business experts, reading their words, and stealing their ideas. We have talked about Peters, and Godin, and Tracy, and a number of other business experts. and we have benefited from all of them. Now I thought it would be […]
Customer Service Starts At The Top
All customer service starts at the top. It’s a cultural thing. To have great customer service you have to have respect for your customers, everyone in the company has to respect the customer not just the customer service people. Look, it’s pretty easy to pass everything along to the customer service people (by the way […]
What The Customer Really Means When She Says…
As a sales people, one of the things that we spend a great deal of time doing is trying to interpret what it is the customer is telling us. Oh, we all can hear the customer and what she is saying, but so often, we don’t really know what she means. There seems to be […]
Marketing: Who Needs It?
“Marketing is too important to be left to the marketers”…David Packard Yes, that’s right. Marketing is way too important to be left to just anyone. You don’t necessarily have to be a professional marketer…but you have to take marketing seriously, very seriously. Actually the worst thing that can happen is when people who think they are marketing […]