There are dreamers. There are drivers. There are doers. And there are diplomats. What kind of leader are you? Idle curiosity shouldn’t move you to answer this question, like a silly Facebook survey. (If you were a rock, what kind of rock would you be? Who cares!) Answer this question because your leadership style determines […]
Read MoreSeven Deadly Leadership Sins that Derail Your Career
In my executive coaching practice, I often work with gifted, capable leaders who repeatedly get passed over for promotion. They move up the ranks from individual contributor to frontline manager and (maybe) a manager of managers. But then they get stuck. An open door to a more senior position remains out of reach, and, unfortunately, […]
Read MoreThe Seven Secrets to SaaS Sales Success
In the world of sales, software as a service is a relatively new product offering. Sales Force was arguably the first to breakthrough in this domain, followed by Concur, who set the record for the largest ever SaaS acquisition in 2014, a whopping $8.3 billion. SaaS didn’t move into the mainstream, however, until cloud computing […]
Read MoreRooting Out Our Leadership Reactivity
Every summer I get weeds in my lawn. Big, ugly, disgusting weeds, some with sharp burrs that dig into the paws of our (pampered) dogs. And every summer I pull out those weeds. Some summers better than others. If I’m in a hurry, I pull on a weed quickly and it snaps off at the […]
Read MoreHow Many Hours Should You Work a Week?
Bad joke alert. Do you know the difference between a generalist and a specialist? A generalist, as the wisecrack goes, knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. A specialist, on the other hand, knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. We […]
Read MoreWARNING: Don’t Use Email This Way. Ever.
It was 4:00 a.m. I’d been tossing and turning since 2:00 a.m. The source of my sleeplessness was an email I received before going to bed many hours earlier. In it, a colleague mentioned in passing some slight I’d served him and that comment got under my skin. By the time 4:00 a.m. arrived, this […]
Read MoreDon’t Let Escalation Destroy Your Leadership
Weehawken, a weird word to be sure, doesn’t mean much to anyone but an unemployed history major. Weehawken is a spit of land along the Hudson River where the careers of two prominent leaders of the American Revolution met their ends, one by death and the other by banishment. The infamous confrontation between Alexander Hamilton […]
Read MoreThe One Thing That Changes Everything
I love Kmart. But not for the low, low prices or the blue light specials. I love Kmart because wherever I travel in the United States, I can find a dead plant there. Let me explain… As a speaker, I’m often asked to address the topic of organizational culture. I begin my speech by putting […]
Read MoreMore Headcount Won’t Get You to Goal. Here’s What Will.
Need more sales? Hire more salespeople. That’s been the strategy for the past decade in sales organizations large and small. Throw bodies at a number. But now that strategy is broken. Why? Three reasons: 1. More headcount is too costly. With rising salaries and the rapidly accelerating expense of employee benefits, increased headcount has become […]
Read MoreSelling Across the Chasm: Venture, Value, and Volume
When I was the head of sales for a group of radio stations, I had a salesperson who possessed a talent no one else on our sales team possessed. He could sell nothing. Don’t get me wrong. He was one of the top producers in the company. By “nothing,” I mean that he had a […]
Read MoreManaging Up without Being a Suck Up
Brown noser, bootlicker, backslapper. These are the more polite terms we use to describe someone who makes their primary job at work garnering the praise and adulation of their boss (and not actually doing real work). Most people’s reaction to fawning coworkers is to refuse to do anything that looks political at all. An executive […]
Read MoreThe Secret to Sales Year Success: Quarterly Sprints
I remember running my first half marathon. It looked a lot like a typical sales year. I charged out of the starting gate with 30,000 of my new best friends, lost steam midway through the race, considered quitting at mile ten, then sprinted through the finish line at the end, collapsing in exhaustion. Most of […]
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