First, picture an apple.
Easy to do.
Why?
“Because you’ve experienced apples with your senses,” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
“You’ve probably done some combination of touching, tasting, seeing, and smelling an apple,” Erik and Tim note.
“You’ve even heard the crunching sound that an apple makes when you bite into it.”
An apple is concrete because you’ve … continue reading
1: The competition to host the 2016 Summer Olympics was down to the final four cities: Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro.
How much was winning the games worth, according to a Credit Suisse study?
The answer: ten billion dollars.
“Three of the cities had reason to be optimistic,” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
“Chicago had President Obama … continue reading
1: Many people believe they are the only ones who don’t fit in.
“Feeling like you don’t belong can change how you interpret everything you experience,” writes Kelly McGonigal in her powerful book The Upside of Stress.
“Conversations, setbacks, misunderstandings,” she notes, “almost anything can be viewed as evidence that, in fact, you don’t belong.”
“The belief that you don’t belong also feeds into many destructive states of mind, … continue reading
1: You’ve got it all wrong.
You’ve been taught that stress is bad for you.
This belief is harmful, Kelly McGonigal argues in The Upside of Stress.
“The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it.”
The fight-or-flight survival instinct is part of your stress response. When something major happens, your sympathetic nervous system mobilizes your entire body.… continue reading
1: You are stuck.
“If only your prospects knew as much about your company and its solutions as you do, they would buy from you, right?” Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer write in their powerful book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale.
Not so fast, the authors suggest.
Erik and Tim emphasize the importance of finding your unique story and point of view as a salesperson. This is essential … continue reading
1: It was the summer of 1985.
One of Silicon Valley’s most legendary meetings was about to happen.
“I was in my office with Intel’s chairman and CEO, Gordon Moore, and we were discussing our quandary,” Andy Grove writes in his book Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.
“Our mood was downbeat,” Andy recalls.
“I looked out the window at … continue reading
1: There are two traps CEOs and leadership teams fall into regarding innovation.
Trap #1: “The minute we think we truly understand the customer and can take our attention off discovering what matters, we’re dead,” Panera founder Ron Shaich writes in Know What Matters: Lessons from a Lifetime of Transformations.
“Sooner or later,” Ron notes, “even the most brilliant and innovative concept will fall behind the times and become … continue reading
1: “So tell me this,” the young executive asked, “Is Panera almost as good as Donatos?”
“Is he joking?” Panera Bread CEO Ron Shaich thought to himself.
It was the early 2000s. Ron was sitting in an executive boardroom at McDonald’s headquarters outside Chicago. Ten years earlier, he had purchased the St. Louis Bread Company and renamed it Panera.
On the other side of the table were members of McDonald’s … continue reading
1: The two Opsware leaders sat in a sterile conference room at the EDS headquarters in Plano, Texas.
EDS was their largest customer.
“Largest customer really understates it,” Opsware CEO Ben Horowitz writes in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. “EDS accounted for 90 percent of our revenue.”
On the other side of the table sat Frank Johnson (not his real name)—“a big guy who grew up … continue reading
1: It was the middle of the dot-com implosion in 2001. Loudcloud CEO Ben Horowitz sat in his office, arms folded.
Across from him sat two colleagues, both of whom had graduated from Stanford Business School.
They presented forty-five slides about why Ben’s decision to start a software division was “quixotic, misguided, and downright stupid,” he writes in his book The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
“They argued that … continue reading
