Strategy advice and information for growing your company.
‘Mr. Selfridge’ is coming back to PBS and I’ve been thinking about how he influenced not only the minds of his day, but how his philosophies, though considered radical in his time, are still valid today, over 100 years later. Harry Selfridge was the pre-eminent and self-made magnate of retail. A larger-than-life personality akin […]
Bill Cosby said ‘I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.’ He wasn’t just speaking about comedy. Maybe you want to reach a larger market but in reality you already have a great niche and could triple your sales if you took the […]
I stumbled on these figures the other day, and while they’re not surprising, they speak a lot to how we can not only improve our sales processes but more importantly, understand what makes people buy. For example, did you know that: 48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect 25% of sales […]
Remember Spencer Johnson’s wonderful little book, “Who Moved My Cheese“? It’s a simple allegory about 2 little mice and 2 little people in a maze who return to a certain station within the maze to eat cheese every day, until one day, the cheese is gone. The book tracks how each of them adapts and […]
When it comes to selling, there’s an old saying that you can have any two of the following three items but not all three at the same time: Good & Fast (but not Cheap) Good & Cheap (but not Fast) Fast & Cheap (but not Good) The reality is that the true value […]
When you empower others , your own power increases. It’s not counterintuitive. It’s the Law of Reciprocity at work. When you do something nice for people they feel compelled to return the favor. In this case, by empowering others, you influence them to feel more positive about you, which translates into increased trust. The greater […]
A while back, a young family with a 7 year old boy moved into the neighborhood. The child was entering second grade, and the mother, mentioned to his teacher that he was shy and nervous about making new friends. In class, the teacher noticed that too. Thinking she was doing a good thing, she told […]
Selling isn’t what it used to be. Buying isn’t either. The internet and social media have changed what we know, how much we know and how we want to be spoken to. But more than that. It’s changed the way we feel about the whole buying process. We can find information about anything now, and […]
We may strive to be perfect, but sometimes we fail. We can set our goals, and plan for success but fall short or fail miserably. We don’t intend to fail. We do everything we can not to go there, but sometimes it happens. In fact, it may happen many times. What do we do about […]
Everyone claims their customer service is excellent; yet we’ve all heard horror stories about how poor customer service ruins sales and loses customers. Business owners hear that too, but many will simply discount it, thinking it doesn’t apply to them. Others may just chalk off one lost sale as a drop in the bucket. But it does count, […]