Noise and…Signal issues In almost all forms of electronics the term noise-to-signal-ratio is used to identify unwanted “noise” like static, from the desired signal. Too much noise and the real signal can’t get through. In our world that term also has meaning – although it’s a different kind of noise that’s the problem. For us […]
New ideas equal…new approaches Practicing real creativity can be daunting to most folks. That probably explains why most of us tend to believe we’re more doers than creators of out-of-the-box ideas. And as long as we believe that false idea that notion will always be true. But the fact is creativity is a process that’s […]
Covid, shutdowns and…rediscovering creativity Back when Covid had us its’s early grip and our bread-and-butter customers were shut down we got creative because we had to. Many turned to selling non-traditional customers to fill the gap that challenge created. That included new ideas – like selling sanitizers to police departments to safeguard them from Covid […]
A little recklessness…Maybe a good thing? If most of us were asked to name a dynamic business leader that we admired, the name that would probably come up most often is Elon Musk. Aside from the fact that he’s frequently ranked as the world’s richest person, we’d probably also agree that his most impressive attribute […]
Frogs, prospects…and negotiating When selling ends and negotiating begins, we have to be especially attuned to what we’re seeing. There are a lot of scenarios and styles that negotiating can take. But the two we see most often are pretty much summed up as “all or none” and “nibbling” for those little compromises. That first […]
The sale’s made…Or is it? So you crafted a great presentation, delivered the perfect close and the buyer even agrees…Eureka! But the then prospect utters the ever famous “There’s just one more thing though” phrase. Now when you were a newbie, you would have thought “so what? How big a deal can that detail be? […]
Mining for gold…Finding weaknesses Discovering those unknown weaknesses in our quiver of skills isn’t exactly straightforward. If it was, they wouldn’t be mysteries and we’d be aware of them. The starting challenge is being open to discovering them. And maybe the best and quickest path to doing that is to ask others what they think […]
Aspirations versus …actionable goals Aspirations are fine and can lead to a lot of important accomplishments. But sometimes like our dream as a kid to be a professional baseball player or fireman, they can also lead to long forgotten intentions that were either unrealistic or just never properly followed up on. Our grown-up aspirations […]
Teaching them just …just like we learn Some think that teaching is easy. Why it’s just a matter of telling the trainee what they don’t already know. But effective teaching is much more than reciting what they need to know and then calling it good. First it largely involves understanding human nature. And that requires […]
Memories and …Checking them Memory can be a very deceiving skill. As trial lawyers know all too well eyewitnesses are often dead wrong about what they’re dead certain they saw – or more correctly what they think they saw. Take that new account we took from a competitor recently. His products and lackluster service consistently […]