With early morning temps now in the low 40s on the beach, my thoughts and heart are now being tugged back to Vermont, the birthplace of my father, my grandfather and three generations before him. It's where my wonderful son, Joshua, was born and still evidences his roots in everything from his email address to his passion of snowboarding. Interestingly enough, even though I've lived in Vermont-sometimes full time, sometimes as a weekender-over the past 40 years and even though five generations of Vermonters have gone before me, the dirty little secret is that since I was born on the south side of Chicago, I'll never be recognized as a true Vermonter by the boys on the bench down at the general store. Having said that, when asked by those same good ol' boys about my background, I merely talk about generations of Vermont ancestors and my son and leave out the part about my growing up in a first generation Polish neighborhood of meat cutters and steel workers.
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Tags:
The Competitive Edge,
October
Just got back from a Saturday afternoon reading on the beach and was, once again, struck by the rapid change in just one week in almost everything. Just before I succumbed to the soft sounds of the surf and the 75 degree temps which somehow forced me to stretch out on the sand and take a short nap, I noticed that the evidence of change was everywhere.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
Sales Optimization,
sales management effectiveness,
sales effectiveness,
improved sales management,
sales management training,
selling skills,
Sales quota,
sales training
The seasonal break of summer, and all of the years of going back to school in September always make me approach these four months not as the month of September, the end of the quarter and then Q4, but as the four month quarter. Nothing really changes except the measurement stick of Q3-critical only for quota benchmarking, but in the practicality of day-to-day, month-to-month selling, this four month period, if properly planned-can become the most rewarding of the year. All it takes is just a bit of short term planning.
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Tags:
sales management,
selling,
sales training,
business tools
This week, almost everyone from school kids laboring over their well worn essays to those of us gathered around both the real and virtual water coolers will be answering the end-of-summer-question, “What did you do on your vacation?” Since I’m just now returning to Boston after spending most of the summer on the beach studying and writing a couple of business plans, my answer is pretty simple: I spent some time searching for The Elusive Red.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
sales,
selling
With the jobs report out yesterday, it’s better than good news on the for-profits side of the picture. Really stellar results, and should supply enough fodder for the Marketing King sitting in the Oval Office to move through the mid-term elections without doing too much (more) damage to the Democrats.
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Tags:
the economy,
small business management,
economic stimulus
It’s been a great summer. Lots of work; lots of time off and a great opportunity to plan ahead a bit for the upcoming crazy season of September through the rest of the year.
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Tags:
sales management,
sales management effectiveness,
management,
leadership,
strategic planning
Gone (and buried, hopefully) are the days of running back to your desk after a trade show with a hand full of business cards and sitting down to make semi-cold calls and then entering basic data into either ACT or Goldmine. Both good basic sales automation tools- back in the day-when the alternative was an over-stuffed Rolodex spilling out hundreds of cards in all shapes and colors with coded notes scribbled everywhere that sometimes only the CIA could interpret.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
Sales Optimization,
sales management,
sales effectiveness,
improved sales management,
Sales quota,
sales training
A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the breakfast counter at the Rye General Store, where I bike most mornings when I’m at the beach, and I looked up from my Globe to see Dottie sitting at the opposite end of the counter. Dottie and I grew up together at the beach pretty much from our earliest childhood years through high school since our parents had cottages right next to one another. After we both bumbled through the normal awkwardness of not having seen one another for 35 plus years, we quickly connected on spouses, jobs, kids and kids’ kids, and then got down to the interesting stuff of what had happened to the pods of kids that we grew up and surfed with.
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Tags:
sales productivity,
Sales Optimization,
sales management,
sales effectiveness,
improved sales management,
Sales quota,
sales training
Price Waterhouse Coopers Press Release: August 5, 2010 – The latest edition of the PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Manufacturing Barometer reports that optimism about the U.S. economy is down slightly from last quarter, but still shows strength with almost half (45 percent) of U.S. industrial manufacturers optimistic about the next 12 months, according to the Q2 2010 report. Hiring plans made a significant jump in Q2 2010. Over the next 12 months, 47 percent of panelists plan to add employees to their workforces, up 20 points from last quarter.
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Tags:
the economy,
price waterhouse coopers,
jobs,
economic stimulus
