The workplace has changed. Or has it? Most of our leaders are in the baby boomer era or learned from baby boomers and were brought up with very disciplined and neo-Victorian standards of leadership. These were based on fear and getting respect just because you were a leader (as opposed to earning it), handing out [...]
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 [...]
In our age of technology and digital dexterity we read more and more via screens than we ever did.The growth of the Internet has led to us consuming news and engaging with each other in different forms, and as a result of this numerous traditional newspapers and magazines have gone out of business.How do you [...]
I had just finished delivering my depressing weekly update verbally to my boss. Things were not looking good. And then he said, “Don’t come in here and tell me how f#@&ed up everything is, tell me how we are going to fix it.”Those immortal words, from one of my early bosses, have stayed with me forever. [...]
I was meeting with a very successful sales consultancy company last week and we were discussing the kind of typical problems they come across working with their clients.They described a few of situations they had faced and we spent some time talking about ways to overcome them and what advice they provided. Copyright: mackoflower / [...]
I was watching a soccer game last week and one of the coaches was yelling instructions, criticizing individual players and berating the overall team performance.There was little encouragement to motive the team and they were already down 0-1, and after another 20 minutes the deficit had increased to 0-3.The half time ‘pep talk’ was about [...]
Is clarity needed about who owns the account? Is it the client or the account manager? That should be obvious shouldn’t it? Well in an ideal world, it should be the person responsible, but unfortunately we don’t live in an ideal world and I’ve seen this “ideal” challenged numerous times. Such challenges are detrimental to [...]
I recently read a quote from a major Customer Relationship Manager provider that said, “Despite all the advancements in technology, sales success is still dependent on one thing, communication.” I’m not sure I fully agree. I would suggest it’s dependent on relationships.When I talk to people responsible for customers, the discussion invariably gravitates to CRM. [...]
Relationships are about trust, respect and building bridges. That is what my experience has taught me. It is NOT about undermining people and trying to catch them out. Don't go looking for a smoking gun.This is something one of my bosses hadn't heard about or chose to ignore. Sandy was old school, but understood people and [...]
I have for sometime debunked the viewpoint that any relationships established on the internet are not real. I mean, are internet relationships really real? Recently I was vehemently challenged on this by my 14 year old daughter, Karly. So I asked her to put her point of view, in writing and if she could do it in [...]