Posted on October 19, 2006
Welcome to all new blog readers. I’m sorry to take a week between posts, but my lecture circuit work is furious right now. Newport, RI–San Jose, CA–Vancouver, BC and Fort Worth in the last week. If you want to have a productive relationship, especially with someone of power, obey their preferences when it comes to …
Posted on October 12, 2006
Many of us live most of our business life in a 90 day box. Others are lucky enough to live on a calendar year basis. I’ve worked in one sales organization that was fanatically driven by the weekly total. This goes back a few years, but I can remember it well: Three bad weeks and …
Posted on October 8, 2006
One of my favorite sayings is an adaptation of a Dale Carnegie quote: “You will accomplish more in the next two months, developing a sincere interest in two people than you will accomplish in the next two months, trying to get two people interested in you.” This has been my experience, not just in my …
Posted on October 3, 2006
Stanley Marcus Jr. gave me one of the best pieces of business advice I’ve ever received. He and I were having lunch in Dallas, discussing the new economy and all of the opportunities it brought to the world. His acumen in retailing was incredible, yet his people skills were even better. I had just outlined …
Posted on September 29, 2006
I just returned from a speaking engagement in Toronto. While in town, I met with a bright young inventor who has a new product going into retail stores in October. Even though he isn’t affiliated with any major distributor or manufacturer, he’s getting hundreds of thousands of pieces in the stores. How? He spent over …
Posted on September 25, 2006
One year ago, I gave a talk at ADP’s annual sales rally in Las Vegas. The talk was for about 600 sales professionals. There are a great bunch of people. They want to make a difference in the world, just like you and I do. I decided to adapt the following essay into the talk. …
Posted on September 5, 2006
Our business life is comprised on projects and meetings. Mostly, it all comes down to project planning and execution and meeting producitivty. If you get both of these right, you can really make a difference. This post regards meetings. In my experience (hundreds of conference room meetings), most participants don’t listen very well. You think …
Posted on August 31, 2006
Have you ever purchased a business book and twenty pages into reading it, you realized that it should have been an article instead? I call these barticles (pronounced bart-ick-elz). You know, the authors took a 4000 word article and spread it out to 180 pages in large type and sold it to you for twenty …
Posted on August 29, 2006
More than ever, less is more when it comes to words in our email Inbox. Did you know that the average information worker (like you and me) reads the equivalent of a novel every two days? And we read it at lightening speed, scanning it in from a computer screen. Sometimes it is not the …
Posted on August 21, 2006
A recent book seller survey of American business people indicates that the average respondant reads .7 business books every three years! In sharp contrast, respondants that are executives at Fortune 1000 companies read 6.7 books per year. Readers are leaders. Why? Because most business books reflect current business trends and the everchanging leadership landscape. If …
