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Are You Incapable of Selling, or Is It This?
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: We are remarkably quick to turn repeated outcomes into identities: I can’t sell, I can’t lead, I’m not cut out for this. But before deciding what the result says about you, it may be worth diagnosing the conditions that produced it. Sometimes we turn repeated results into…
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How Bad Do You Want It?
Today’s Strategic Reflection Post in two sentences: In selling, our job is to diagnose the problem, recommend the solution, master our sales process and ask for the business; the client’s job is to decide whether to buy. If we measure our performance only by whether they say yes or no, we may be judging ourselves…
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A Confused Mind Always Says “NO”
Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences: A confused mind says “no” because confusion makes commitment difficult. If I cannot clearly understand what I am being asked to decide, why would I say yes? “A confused mind always says no” is an idea frequently used in sales and marketing. The premise is simple: when…
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Trust is a Process, not a Pitch
One of the many distortions inside organizations under pressure is the way trust gets compressed into a moment. Somewhere along the way, leaders begin to believe that trust lives inside the sales conversation itself… inside the presentation, the proposal, the pitch. If the story is compelling enough, if the value is articulated clearly enough, if…
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Before you think “SELL” – think – “Start a Conversation”
I have often said to people that my job is primarily a sales job. If I don’t sell, I don’t eat. That is the unromantic truth of being self-employed for more than thirty years. And yet… despite all those years, I still lose my way sometimes. I lose it when I start focusing too hard…
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What Happens When Integrators Try to Live Inside Specialist Templates?
For a long time I thought my life made no sense on paper. If you lined up my work history the way a career counselor would, it looked scattered. Laboratory work. Sales. Marketing. Workshops. Systems thinking. Copywriting. Organizational behavior. Training. Consulting. Framework-building. None of it followed the clean arc we’re taught to admire. I kept…
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Do You Have Customer Relationships or Hostages?
Noah Fleming shared this story about a $20M company, a top sales guy who “owned” every major client, and a president quietly panicking because this top sales guy had resigned and was taking half the revenue with him. Noah asked a simple but disarming question: Do you have customer relationships… or do you have hostages?…
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The Hidden Message behind a Recurring Problem
Every problem you encounter in your business is really a symptom of an underlying systemic problem or flawed process. Scenario 1: A High Performer Is Struggling in Their Role You hired someone with an impressive resume and a track record of success in their previous roles. But six months in, they’re struggling, missing deadlines, and…
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Operation “Get 10” for Start-Ups & Entrepreneurs
If you’ve had dreams of running a high-profit, high-impact business but still feel that you’re a struggling start-up, this is the piece that’s missing. There is a lot of information out there about product-marketing fit, strategic planning, systems creation, process documentation, content marketing, social media effectiveness as well as the business building essentials – budgeting,…
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