A salesman was demonstrating unbreakable combs in a department store. He was impressing the people who stopped by to look by putting the comb through all sorts of torture and stress. Finally to impress even the skeptics in the crowd, he bent the comb completely in half, and it snapped with a loud crack. Without…
There’s an old saying: Do what you love. I agree with this sage advice, but success takes more than doing what you love doing. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. In addition to doing what you love, you have to seek excellence in what you love. If you enjoy playing football, you still have to practice…
Late in The Avengers, New York City is under assault by alien forces spiraling out of a portal in the sky. The superheroes fight valiantly, but they’re overrun and need the aid of the local police. Seeing an officer in authority, Captain America rushes to him and tells him what needs to be done to…
Facebook and Twitter can be effective tools to getting your message out and growing your business. I use them myself. They are not, however, the sort of instruments that you can rely on. They give you a presence, a boost, but no business succeeds because they have accounts on social media. These have to serve…
The biggest obstacle to practicing is you. If you are a leader, then you have to fight the temptation to assume that since your sales teams have been selling for years they don’t need to practice. The difference between the amateurs and the professionals is not their tenure but their commitment to practice and getting…
The other day we showed our son his first live-action super hero movie, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, a movie in part about the creation of a successful culture. When the super heroes are first brought together, one of them describes their grouping as a time-bomb, as opposed to a team. They don’t get along well…
Coaching involves much more than actions and skills. Coaching is a culture that creates and multiplies success. A coaching culture, like any culture, must have laws, beliefs and consequences for success and for failure. It’s not enough to say you want or you have a winning coaching culture; you as a leader have to work…
We all make mistakes and have bad plays. The important thing is to learn from them and endeavor to make less of them as time goes by. Lou Gehrig said it best: “In the beginning I used to make one terrible play a game. Then I got so I’d make one a week and finally…
Want to move up, personally and professionally? It’s not something you can do a little at a time with the occasional break thrown into the mix. As Stephen R. Covey said, “character and skill development is a process of ongoing improvement or progression, a constant upward spiral.” Moving up takes constancy of will and decision…
A bad attitude can be detrimental to the success of a sales operation whether it’s had by a newbie or by a veteran employee. Perhaps more so if it’s the employee who’s been on the team for many years. Regardless of the experience and skill of the employee, you must not tolerate a bad attitude. …