Daily Business Blog - Leadership & Marketing Articles

One Of The Saddest Things I Heard

Rows of Rubber Ducks

I was standing in a hallway and saw a woman I recognized. I didn’t remember her name but I remembered meeting her in the same spot and having a conversation with her exactly a year ago. I was at the Be the Change Event, a gathering of entrepreneurs geared towards growing our businesses.

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The Human Brain: Friend or Foe?

brain friend or foe

The human brain is a remarkable organ, yet at times it can be our worst enemy. It comes equipped with remarkable cognitive, reasoning, and creative powers. But it also has many built-in patterns of thinking and perceiving that do not always serve us well. Two of the worst offenders are the tendency to see what we want to see and to screen out data that contradicts our prevailing view of the world.

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Four Ways to have a Big and Bold Mindset in Your Business

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I’ve often heard speakers in delivering their motivational prose to audiences say, “the sky’s the limit.” What if we do a little paradigm shift and say, “The sky is no limit?” The latter gives you a whole new mindset and it removes the limitations we place on ourselves. Look at your business…what limitations have you been unconsciously setting that are hindering your growth potential?

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Google’s Moment to Pause in 2 Minutes

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Google is a fast paced environment that provides a push for innovation, creativity and intensity. With intensity comes the need to pause. The reason you need to pause is that the body and mind are designed to function optimally when they have gaps, pauses, breaks, time-outs or whatever you’ll call them. If the body and brain do not get this then it begins a rapid sequence of breaking down.

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Strategies to Help Your Small Business Succeed in Challenging Times

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Some small businesses and professionals easily fall off the marketing train when times are tough. This is the time for real marketing. What happens is when people are busy making money, they don’t market because they have all the business they want. Then, when there is a slide, they say they can’t afford to market. Well, you can’t afford not to market. You can market your business in numerous cost free or low cost ways.

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Why Traditional Marketing Agencies are Failing … and what to do about it

business crumbling

Traditional marketing agencies that offer full service marketing, advertising and public relations services are disintegrating. Firms that have stood the test of time are filing Chapter 7, or re-organizing under Chapter 11. Why? Like so many others, these overly-staffed traditionalists failed to focus on the changing landscape of the digital age. Smaller, leaner and tech-savvy digitally-astute agencies are gaining market share on a daily basis.

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Got Flash Foresight?

flash foresight

“Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible,” by Daniel Burrus, redefines what is possible in the business world. I was so impressed after reading it that I sent Burrus an email telling him how much I enjoyed it and would enjoy chatting with him face to face. We met for a great glass of wine and had an interesting time discussing the book. Turns out we share many ideas on how business leaders can cope with today’s hyper-paced markets and high levels of uncertainty (Is it any wonder I thought he was brilliant?!)

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Shop ‘Till You Drop (With Caution)

Shopping

Buy fewer pieces but all high quality. In Europe almost everyone looks good even when they wear the same clothes repeatedly. The reason? Because they are of good quality. I was brought up this way too, so it doesn’t bother me at all to wear the same clothes year after year. However, I do take the opportunity to freshen up my wardrobe during the sale seasons and suggest you do the same.

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Five Tips for Converging on Great Ideas

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Last week I talked about the first phase of the creative process (divergence), which consists of stimulating new thinking by diversifying and exploring. The second phase in the process is convergence, which involves refining and choosing the best possibilities from the ideas generated during the divergence phase. In today’s global economy, market opportunities abound. For most companies, the problem is not coming up with enough good ideas. It’s deciding which ones to follow through on. Convergence tools help to make sense of what often seems like an overwhelming number of possibilities. They enable you to narrow the range of choices…

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3 Tips for Better Cold Calling

cold calling

As a sales force development consultant, I have worked with sales teams of all shapes, sizes and industries. Every team thinks they are “different” when it comes to their product and how it should be sold. And while I often hear “our industry is unique. We rely solely on referrals”, I can tell you that every company in every industry relies on word of mouth—yours is no different.

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If Nothing is on your calendar you probably are doing Nothing

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What are the chances of you doing your highest payoff activities and the activities that will put you in the highest probability position to achieve your goals if nothing is on your calendar, or the things on the calendar aren’t the ‘right’ activities? Is every minute of your day accounted for toward something? It needs to be if you want to be as successful as possible.

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3 Ways to Give Underperformers a Kick in the Butt

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On every team there are “A” players and under-performers. My guess is, you know who those people are, but may be struggling with how to deal with the latter. It can feel like a complicated problem, especially when you are dealing with under-performers on the sales team. In my time as a corporate sales trainer, I have found that there are three simple ways to effectively manage sales force development and performance.

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Don’t Be Afraid To Imitate Others

Leader

You’ve heard it said before: imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.  It’s true, so go ahead and look to businesses that you respect. What do they do well? For example, do they have strong operations, great pricing, quality products, strong customer support or inventive marketing strategies?  Identify what you admire about them and try to imitate, or better yet, where possible, even improve upon those aspects that strike you favorably. A good way to step ahead of your competition is to be vigilant about looking closely at what they are doing.  Likewise, some of your best ideas may…

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What to Look for When Hiring a Content Marketing Pro

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Everyone knows that newspapers have fired or forced out journalists left and right since the shrinking of newspaper revenues began some years back. It’s not for the lack of content; the news is still being reported, in blogs, online news organizations, the traditional news media, etc. Advertising revenues vanished as consumers are sick of the bombardment. Content marketing has taken over.

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Idea-itis

Ideas

The truth is that there is no way that you can do it all, even if you have a team of people helping you. The only way to create a thriving and sustainable business is to first, evaluate your options, second, decide which things you will do and which you won’t and finally, getting into action and doing!

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Stop Confabulating!

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“We know what our employees really want or need without asking. Our customer relationships are in great shape. That‘s the way everyone in our industry does it, so why should we do it differently? We don’t need to slow down to plan or communicate; everyone here knows what to do. Sure it’s happening elsewhere, but technology won’t disrupt our industry.”

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