How do you “handle” the competition? Meaning, do your competitors factor into your offers, your customers, your sales and marketing strategy? How much weight should you give to their consideration? And, What exactly should know about your competition and how do those insights affect YOUR plans? Unless you’re operating in a total vacuum, you should...Read More

Last week, part 1 of Rocking Your Resolution, we talked about how most Resolutions die a quick and sad death – like a fruit fly circling a banana. WHY? Well there are many reasons, but you can break it down into two main reasons most resolutions fail: 1) You make the wrong resolution 2) You don’t...Read More

There’s a certain comfort zone and preference most people have with the term “Marketing” versus “Selling”. Try telling someone “You’re going to start selling” and imagine what that reaction is versus telling a business owner or employee “You’re going to start marketing the business now.” Which one makes you a little sweaty or anxious? Selling...Read More

Most small businesses don’t yet have a sales team. All the “selling” has been shouldered by the owner from the launch and through the growth of the business and that owner wears way too many hats. For successful businesses, at some point, the owner decides that growth requires sharing that “sales” hat and then seeks...Read More

You can say it in many ways. You can define it in many terms – from the technical to blunt: CASH FLOW is KING for small business. The ability to survive and the opportunity to thrive for a small business both hinge on access to available cash. Surviving means you have the necessary cash to...Read More

As progressive sales practitioners we work hard to get our clients focus on articulating and demonstrating their value to earn more sales. Recently, a business owner I’ve met several times, let’s call him Mr. Discouraged, approached me at an event and he said to me, “Look, I read your blogs and I’ve been doing this...Read More

“Just the facts, ma’am” – is the iconic line parodying detective Joe Friday from the old show Dragnet. Meant to demonstrate the character’s dry approach to interviewing witnesses, sometimes I feel like I’m meeting a live “Joe Friday” when I’m approached by someone trying to sell me a product. No context, no perspective or relevance...Read More

  When was your first or most impressive blow of rejection? Was it being picked last for kickball? Denied by your crush for a date to prom? Not getting in to your first choice college? Or losing a job to a more qualified candidate? Most of us have complicated and powerful associations with rejection that...Read More

“Opt In” or “Subscribe Here” . . . we have come to expect a certain level of value when we surrender our email address to a company and expect some unwritten {and also written} rules to be followed and a significant exchange of something worthwhile to us in response to handing over our email address....Read More

In getting to the business “promise land” – profit and growth, success isn’t always a perfectly pristine theory translated into a formula. Success is tough and dirty work, sometimes even ugly. This week, I had to share a fascinating series of books {and short but insightful blogs} by Roy Osing: BE DiFFERENT or be dead...Read More