When I played soccer as a kid I played a lot. I practiced and practiced as everyone else was better! We’d be out in the evenings until after dark, when you could hardly see the ball, and in all weathers. I learned some powerful life lessons and one of them was that Tenacity can be more [...]
Building strategic relationships take time and involve building trust and respect. Building trust and respect means being consistent and doing the obvious things well. I was talking with a consultant friend of mine recently and he reminded me that it often is not the smart analytics or process that we bring to the table [...]
Doing the same thing and expecting different results The famous Albert Einstein quote came to mind recently as I was reflecting on a round of golf. I was 6 over par and heading for my best round ever, when on the 16th hole I hit my drive into a fairway bunker. My ball was on [...]
One the best indicators is the state of your top clients. Ask yourself these five questions. 1. Are my top clients growing and am I keeping pace with their growth? If your clients are growing and you are not, then there’s a strong chance you are losing market share and therefore share of wallet. That means someone [...]
What is a strategic partnership? So many times we hear the term “strategic” and “partnership” used, abundantly and wrongly. But if you put them together, what does it mean? How do you form one and know if it exists? In this series of “How Do You Know You Have A Strategic Partnership”, my last three [...]
What is a strategic partnership? So many times we hear the term “strategic” and “partnership” used, abundantly and wrongly. But if you put them together, what does it mean? How do you form one and know if it exists? In this series of “How Do You Know You Have A Strategic Partnership”, my last two articles [...]
What is a strategic partnership? So many times we hear the term “strategic” and “partnership” used, abundantly and wrongly. But if you put them together, what does it mean? How do you form one, can you, and how do you know it exists? I count myself extremely fortunate to have not only worked for Coca-Cola for over 20 [...]
Are you credible? What sort of question is that? Of course I am. I have to be. And even if I’m not, why is this so important? What do we mean by being credible? One dictionary definition is: “Having credibility means you are believable and reliable.”Here’s another one from a long time friend and past colleague, [...]
So many times, we are faced with a situation in which our customer or internal company relationships have changed, but we are not sure why. There can be a variety of reasons, but often it can be attributed to us having failed to manage their expectations and they have not told us. Several years ago I was with Coca-Cola [...]
How do we make sure we don’t lose the customers we can’t afford to lose?The Top 10 to 20 accounts of any B2B organization typically represent 60-80% of revenue and profit. In some cases, they are as high as 95%. The consequences of losing one of these customers are dramatic, and in today's business environment, [...]