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Latest Blog Posts
Four Ways to Tell Your Boss the Truth Without Getting Fired
Dear Employee, It’s strategy season and what your organization most needs now is the truth. Here’s the bad news: the truth is usually in hiding. You and your teammates know things about what’s going on with the business that your boss can’t hope to know. You live...
Five Kinds of Truth – An Open Letter to the Boss
Dear Boss, It’s strategy season and what you most need now is the truth. Here’s the bad news: No one tells you the truth. This may come as a surprise. You think you’re approachable, fair, and level-headed. Trust me, you’re not... at least not in the minds of your...
Being Nick Saban
What’s different about this year’s kickoff of the college football season is the amount of attention being given to Nick Saban’s coaching philosophy. He’s become a topic of discussion not only in the sports press but in the business press. I guess that’s what happens...
Four Things That Shouldn’t Surprise Us About Groupon
Rumor has it that Groupon’s sales organization is getting restive and that even long-time high performers are thinking about moving on. Here’s a working list of things that shouldn’t surprise Andrew Mason and his team at Groupon: Salespeople Flying the Coop - Don’t...
I’d Like Some Of Maria’s Mindset, Please
Every now and then, life gives you a reset button. This past March, I went on a serving trip to South Africa with a group from our church. Our team's main purpose was to visit patients at an AIDS hospice outside Johannesburg. Honestly, I was ambivalent about...
Three Mindsets of Long-run Salespeople
After a 3-month unpaid internship, I got my first job as a salesperson. I was perhaps the most unlikely salesperson in the world. My dad was a doctor and all five of his sons had been subtly indoctrinated to think that sales was a dirty word. In no way had I been...
Six Shortcuts Salespeople Are Tempted To Take
A while ago, I had the opportunity to shadow a top-performing salesperson who sells an innovative service to small businesses. We spent a high-energy day visiting business owners to see if this service was a good fit for them. It wasn’t easy to get past the...
Does Your Brand Have Integrity?
Why do some brands grab our hearts while others leave us looking around the room to see who else is there? Don’t blame (or credit) the marketing department. At least, not entirely. Take my recent visit to a Blockbuster store. Like you, I rarely visit the blue and...
Three Marks of a Rich Company
Years ago, I was lucky enough to tour Israel and Palestine with a long-time mentor of mine who just happened to be an expert in the area’s ancient history and current, complicated situation. As part of our tour, we stopped in on Elias Chacour, a remarkable Palestinian...
What Kind of Smart Employees Do You Need?
I work with smart people all of the time. They are often products of the best schools in the world, have impressive accomplishments, and can do super mental gymnastics. If you haven’t watched a Harvard MBA do a mental triple somersault with a twist in the layout...
Why Respecting Sales is One Key to Growth
Planes are funny places. Through the roulette of arcane airline seating procedures, you can wind up next to all sorts of people. For fun, I sometimes try to guess within 2 minutes which social group the person next to me ran in when they were in high school or...
Things we love to call salespeople: Heroes, Goats, and Magicians
If you're like me, you have a love-hate relationship with certain groups or products. I love my Mac suite of products - except when I don't. When they hum along with all of their elegant simplicity, sync'ing my information beautifully while looking and feeling eerily...