Leaders are increasingly challenged to preserve balance between their corporate responsibilities and their personal core values. The inability to sustain this balance can cause conflicts for the leader and confusion for those who depend on her or him. A prolonged imbalance can breed distrust in a team. One way to help leaders preserve balance is for them to measure the energy and skill invested in their key activities versus the benefits they receive back from …
The vast amount of information available via the web has radically altered the selling process. Potential customers can reference websites, blogs, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other web-based tools to gather volumes of data before they ever reach out to a salesperson. If you are not careful, when that inquiry arrives, your response will convince them that your product or service is just like the other commodities they see all over the web and they …
Leadership is the practice of influence. Inspiring people to follow your lead requires a commitment to personal engagement – an investment of precious time to be prioritized versus other stakeholder demands for your attention. Where does personal engagement fit into your priorities? People choose to follow you because they believe in you and where you are leading them. When they stop trusting you, your ability to continue as leader is over. This is why engaging …
Doing more than expected is time-consuming and expensive. Sustaining this level of effort is difficult. There’s always a shortcut available – why not take it? Creating value frequently involves this choice. Which path would you choose? Our world of connectivity provides access to reams of information and promotes instant gratification. Many folks are so addicted to their smart devices that it’s hard to have a cogent conversation with them…the phone rings and their focus is …
Experienced sales people know that their primary task is to identify and resolve a customer’s need. Look for pain points and propose solutions to remove the pain. Customers know this too which is why they often want to shortcut the selling process by quickly categorizing your proposal and focusing on the price for pain removal. How you react defines how seriously the customer will consider your proposal. This is the decisive moment. How will you …
If you rely on distributors to get your products to market, then your core challenge is managing your relationship to maximize your mutual benefit. The distributor is not your employee, but you must ensure that the integrity of your value proposition is sustained as if the distributor worked directly for you. The distributor is not your end customer, but you must help achieve the distributor’s and end user’s goals. Your distributor relationship is ideal for customer-partnering. The most …
Your people are your most sustainable competitive advantage. When they robustly and consistently demonstrate your company’s core Principles, they create experiences for your customers that cultivate enduring relationships. In addition, research confirms the direct linkage between high company performance and high employee engagement. Engagement infuses your company’s actions with vitality, strengthens your competitive advantage, and focuses energy to grow your business. It requires a consistent investment of your time and a regular infusion of new ideas to fuel your people’s …
Everyone can be seduced by a zero price. But those who react most eagerly to the word “free” rarely pause to consider the value of your offering. Could they become customers who actually invest in your product or service? People reacting to a zero price rarely stop to consider if the offer is worth it. Because they don’t assess the value of your free offer, they will never be your customer. So why invest your precious resources …
What’s the most vital ingredient of enduring relationships? Your first instinct might be to answer that trust is the most essential ingredient. But in today’s “connection” economy, there’s an even more primal element that enables trust and benefits everyone in the relationship. Before trust can grow, there must be generosity. Generosity creates trust. Generosity is more than offering discounts or giving products or services away for free. If we don’t know you, why would we invest valuable time …
The daily demands on your time – meetings, email, personnel management, etc. – can distract you and destroy your plans for a productive day. Before you know it, there is little time for the proactive tasks you had planned to pursue like following up with customers and collaborators, asking for referrals, reviewing your key performance indicators, goal setting and planning. Time management is a challenge for every business leader. Filling your day with “busyness” instead of …