“Every employee has talent of some kind: He or she is skilled at being able to analyze numbers, bring products to market, or close sales deals. But talent is just the starting point. Genius is talent unleashed. It’s the ability to exploit each employee’s unique values, passions, strengths, curiosity, and intuition so they can add…
You and your competitors have a common goal—all of you want to out sell the others in the marketplace. But, do you really know your competition? Here are things that you must know about your competition: 1. Who are your major competitors? This could be by product, so you might have many competitors. 2. How…
Forecasting sales at a start-up requires in-depth research along with educated guess work. There is no substitute for knowing your customers and why they will buy your offering. Buyers will choose your product over the competition because it is different or better. Presuming your offering is competitive and is desired by the target market, here…
Whether or not we are technically in a recession is for the economists to decide. But, for most of us business is down. This is a call to action for us to do things differently than last year. While I don’t have a magic wand, here are some commons sense things to do in tough…
A few days ago a good friend of mine asked for my opinion about the recent stock market decline. His 401K had lost over 40% of its value in the last 12 months and the market was in a free fall, or so it seemed. He asked me if he should sell before it was…
As many of you know, I am writing a book on negotiation which leverages my work as a trainer and lecturer in negotiation, along with my personal experiences in negotiation. It is a fascinating subject which seems easy on the surface, but is very difficult to practice. The other day in my consulting practice I…
What makes a great sales leader? Is it a manager with confidence, an ego under control, and empathy for others? Or, is he or she an egocentric, power-mad narcissist? A recent article by Live Science (10/7/08) suggests that it is probably the latter. The article suggests that, “Narcissists are overconfident about their abilities and like…
While the stock market appears to be in a free fall and the business press is tossing around words like depression, doom, and chaos (irresponsibly, I may add), there is cause for optimism. The good news is that the US dollar is rising very quickly in value on the world market. Last week the dollar…
Small companies don’t have to invest in expensive marketing efforts to be successful. There are many things you can do to drive new business that are free or inexpensive. Here are a few 8 ideas to consider: 1. Make sure that your website is bursting with useful content for your readers and customers; give them…
Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK, and AOL are getting smarter. Trying to fool the major search engines is getting harder to do as the major search engines continue to upgrade and refine the search algorithms to determine rank on web searches. Most website owners rely upon the expertise of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultants to help…