The Fundamentals of Becoming Excellent

The premise? Your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. Understand that talent doesn't mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It's an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. How are certain people able to go on improving? The answers begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields. The conclusions:

Develop One Leadership Skill a Year

When it comes to leadership development, how big are you willing to dream?  How about a development journey so comprehensive that it will permanently change your leadership brand?  Welcome to the one-skill-a-year learning experience.  That’s right – a significant focus on one skill, for a whole year.  Let’s say the average leader starts managing people sometime in their late 20’s and has a normal 30 year career.

How to Turn Your Business Into a Commitment Factory

 You’re passionate, you care, you get it, you think about your business day and night, but let’s face it, you’ve got a big vision for that business and you probably can’t realize that vision all by yourself. Your passion and commitment are essential, but it’s your ability to build passion and commitment for that vision in others that is going to be the key to growth. You need committed and connected staff members. You need committed and loyal customers. You need to create a commitment factory.

Don’t Let Fear of Failure Hold You Back

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is temporary detour, not a dead end". - Denis Waitley  In every sales conversation some risk is involved. Risks include appearing unqualified, appearing to not understand the prospect’s business, not being understood by the client, and that your price is too high. Because salespeople are afraid of those risks—afraid of failure—they do things they think will reduce the risk, and in reality they increase the risk, says Charles H. Green in his article How You’re Unknowingly Increasing Sales Risk.

Forget About Scale, Go Talk to Your Customers

Joe Gebbia is a co-founder of Airbnb, which matches travelers with a variety of rooms for rent worldwide (think everything from a spare pullout sofa to a castle). The company has listings in 184 countries and has booked more than a million nights. TechCrunch recently reported that the company was in the process of closing a $100 million round of venture capital funding.

One Question Every Small Business Owner Must Answer

Understanding Your Competitive Advantage Every business owner must be able to answer one very basic question, “Why should a prospective customer buy my product or service rather than a competitor’s?” If the owner cannot answer this question, he or she should probably cut his or her losses and seek alternative employment. Fortunately, this isn’t a complex question. At its core, there are only two possible answers; either the product or service is being offered at a lower price or the offering must be differentiated from the competition’s.

Is Your Company Missing the Boat on Pricing Opportunities?

A recent survey shows that most companies are timid when it comes to price increases. Expert price optimization can solve that issue while enhancing profitability and growth. While the slow economic recovery certainly affects the profitability of producers of many goods and services, a reluctance to “optimize” prices is a trend that could have far reaching negative consequences for companies in most sectors of commerce.

7 Steps to a Drama-Free Office

If you work with other people (and who doesn’t?) reflect on the last week and notice how much time you wasted in drama: the energy-draining behaviors or exchanges that keep you from what you really want to be doing.  Think about all the infighting, water-cooler talk, meaningless meetings, turf wars, pouting, rants, and other behaviors that blocked positive, productive interactions in your organization.

Profitability Management

Sales Lead Generation

Brian Carroll's book called Lead Generation for the Complex Sale is the perfect book for business men and women who are looking to get more and better quality leads for their sales team the whole year round. The three contributions by Brian which are mentioned about his book review on the website are universal lead definition, multi-modal and lead nurturing.