1: “In the selling arena, customers don’t care if you have a mortgage to pay,” Jeffrey Fox writes in How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.

“Customers don’t care if you need their business to win a contest,” he notes.  “Customers don’t care why your shipments are late.  Customers don’t care what you like, where you went to school, or what sports … continue reading

1: Mr. K was “arguably the best salesman in the U.S. wine industry,” Jeffrey Fox writes in How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.

Mr. K became chairman of one of the country’s finest premium wine companies. ” For over thirty years, he personally sold millions of dollars’ worth of wine, and many of those sales were made well before wine was … continue reading

To deliver a 3-minute pitch, must we dumb it down? Just the opposite. 

Brant Pinvidic is a Hollywood producer who has sold more than three hundred TV and movie projects, including the mega-hit The Biggest Loser.

Pitching in Hollywood is no different from “raising money, convincing parents at the PTA meeting, asking for a promotion, marketing our company, and getting board approval,” he writes in his book The 3-Minute Rule: … continue reading

1: “My wife says you help people pitch their ideas. Do you think I need some work on mine?” 

Brant Pinvidic was sitting next to Jeff. It was the start of a three-hour bus ride into the British Columbia wilderness for a heli-skiing adventure.

The two men knew each other through their young sons, who were friends at school.

“Well, I guess you’d say I run a plumbing company,” Jeff … continue reading

1: We are building a presentation. What is the most important question we must ask ourselves? 

“How will they rationalize the decision to ‘buy in’ to my proposal?” Brant Pinvidic writes in his book The 3-Minute Rule: Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation.

Humans are the only species with the ability to rationalize.

“And it’s the basis and foundation for every decision we make,” he … continue reading

1: “The [television] network pitch room is a cold, ruthless, unforgiving setting with a very difficult audience,” Brant Pinvidic writes in his book The 3-Minute Rule: Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation.

“Meetings start with smiles that last about ten seconds,” he writes. “If you’ve ever watched Shark Tank, that no-nonsense attitude and curt style was patterned after a TV network pitch.”

The year was … continue reading

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” -John Dewey

1: As leaders, one of our most important roles is to help our team members learn from their experiences.

How do we do that?  

We ask questions.

“There are two questions that we should ask of a salesperson at the end of a call or at the end of the day,” writes Brian Tracy in his … continue reading

1: As leaders, one of our most important roles is to unlock the full potential of each person on our teams.

One of the best ways to release this potential is to organize “Quality Circles,” Brian Tracy writes in his terrific book Sales Management.

This practice involves gathering our team for a specific one-hour time block each week to focus on a single question to drive “continuous and never-ending … continue reading

1: The date was April 1, 1993. Lou Gerstner had just been named CEO of IBM. For decades, IBM had been one of the world’s most admired corporations.

Now, it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Lou had started his career as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s largest and most respected consultancies. Soon after taking his new role, he asked his friends at … continue reading

1: It’s been an excellent strategic planning meeting.  

Our leadership team has put forward a HOT or huge, outrageous target, the one, longer-term goal “that matters most . . . Failure to achieve it will make every other accomplishment pale by comparison.”

Next, we have set clear goals for the year that move us toward our huge, outrageous target.  

We’re done, right?  

Not so fast, say Mark Moses and his … continue reading