Category Archives: Jumpstarting Growth
The End of Cold Calling
Whether you’re looking for a customer or a job, two transformations taken together are rendering cold calling obsolete: • In the wired era, it is too easy and inexpensive to cold call in very large numbers, so everyone is inundated …
The CEO and Key Customers
A recent issue of The Economist described how the head of Sales for Boeing once woke up CEO Alan Mulally in the middle of the night to speak with a customer who was backing off a purchase. Knowing Mulally, I’m …
Cut Costs to Grow
Pepsi recently announced an ambitious program to reduce operating costs simultaneous with a marked increase in advertising and marketing. In doing so, they echoed other smart, successful companies that understand the need to treat strategic expenditures that contribute to growth …
A Time for Complexity, and a Time for Simplicity
Many of you sell products or services that are complicated in their technical make-up or functionality. You employ people with highly specialized skills, and the sound of complex jargon fills your meeting rooms and hallways. That technical culture, of course, …
Your Next Big Win
A recent study revealed that basketball players are more likely to attempt a three-point shot if they hit their previous three-pointer. However, the shooting percentage on that shot is considerably lower than that of players who had missed their previous …
A Useless Mission Statement …
… reads something like this: “We will exceed the expectations of our customers, maintain a rewarding work environment for our employees, maximize returns for shareholders, and be responsible corporate citizens, while infusing excellence in all that we do.“ This statement …
Marketing’s Brave New World
Marketing has always been one of the least-carefully-managed business functions, and even in relatively stable times, before the internet and social media revolutions, vast amounts of money have been wasted on ineffective marketing, much of it avoidably. And now things …
Two Roads Diverged
Beginning in 1848, three hundred thousand people from all over the world rushed to California in the great Gold Rush, braving long and dangerous trips and a lawless society once they arrived in the hope that they would strike it …
How Strong a Leader Do You Want To Be?
In the business press, it has become fashionable to argue that the productivity gains enjoyed by companies during the past few years have reached their natural limit, and that you’re now in for a period of steady or rising costs. …
Small Changes, Huge Implications
Woody Allen’s movie Match Point explores how a tiny twist of fate – the final rotation of a twirling gold ring, which will determine if it will disappear forever in the river or settle on land to be discovered later …
