The Tyranny of the Urgent

I have a somewhat unusual combination of education and job experience. I think I am one of the few college professors who have worked in industry as a service manager in a line management position. From that background, I have had the opportunity to consult with a number of service managers in the computer industry.…

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Initiative Overload

Individually and organizationally, we are obsessed with getting things done. It’s important, it’s how we learn, grow, and achieve. Too often, however, this obsession is dysfunctional. We overload ourselves and our organizations with too many things—too many “strategic initiatives,” too many meetings, too many “top priorities,” too much activity. Too often, in our quest to…

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CEOs Change the Deeper Meaning of the Ultimate Bottom Line

As I read this morning about the Business Roundtable changing this fundamental principle, I was really glad to see it. It’s about time. Several hundred influential CEOs got together and agreed to revise priorities. The next quarter’s profits—which maximizes short-term share price—are no longer the supreme goal and top priority. Here’s the story: AMERICA’S CEOS JUST…

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Don’t Let the World Define What Success Means for You

Whenever I read popular publications for entrepreneurs, like Inc. and Entrepreneur magazines, I feel like a failure. I didn’t attend an Ivy League college (although I was an academic All-American!). I have no coding skills. I don’t live in Silicon Valley, I’m not an Instagram influencer. I’m not a fearless 22 year old with world…

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Start/Stop/Pivot/Restart Sales Strategies

Sales, as with most things, is something that demands regularity in execution. By that, I mean, there are many things a sales person or manager has to do to perform. Some of the obvious: Prospecting, working deals, planning calls, developing proposals, developing territory/account plans, pipeline management/forecasting, time management, learning/training, one on one’s with managers (hopefully…

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Set SMART Goals & SMARTER Goals

How many times have you set a New Year’s resolution, only to give in to your old ways after a short time? If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? We all have a tendency to set New Year’s resolutions and goals without giving any thought as…

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Sales, You Have to Do the Whole Job, All the Time

We—or rather my wife—had an incident the other day. We have a housekeeper that comes into our house once a week. Recently, our housekeeper told my wife, “I really don’t like what I have to do here. You have too many bathrooms, I only want to clean one—or I’d love not to clean any. I…

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Learn to Never Handle a Paper or Email Twice

We all do it… to our own detriment. So, let’s make a pact that we will try, if not succeed, to handle our incoming messages more efficiently. Personal time management helps immensely to make a better manager of you and me. All of us have time management tips and tricks to help us get through…

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Valuing Time: Your Customers’ and Yours

Time is the only non-recoverable thing that each of us controls. We waste it, it’s forever lost. We waste our customers’/prospects’ time, we’ve cheated them out of their most precious commodity. We let our customers/prospects waste ours—we’ve enabled them to de-value us and what we can do to help them. Ironically, we seem to treat…

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