Recent Articles
Monthly Tips for the Top Executive
Achieving Predictable Success
As a serial entrepreneur who has personally launched over 40 businesses, and as a consultant and coach to hundreds of business leaders, I’ve come to realize that the 'growth code' is out there, in plain view for anyone who knows where to look. There is indeed a code, a pattern, a DNA if you will, to achieving predictable success. .....more
Competing Against Offshoring
Recently, we evaluated a project where an Indian offshore engineering firm successfully won a local contract against several small US engineering firms. The interesting thing about this project was that the customer was a small local startup firm and not a multinational corporation. The Indian company also had a sales office in Colorado. .....more
Eight Ways to Engage Employees and Power-Up Performance During a Recession
If you've seen the movie Jerry Maguire, you'll remember the scene where Tom Cruise asks Cuba Gooding, Jr., "What can I do for you?" Gooding says, "Show me the money." Many employers think that's the key to employee engagement. But any company that THINKS you have to pour money on employees to get them engaged will write off employee engagement efforts during tough economic times. "We just can't afford to do it right now," they say. In fact, you can't afford NOT to pay attention to engagement, especially during a recession when sales are soft. Employee engagement scores regularly account for up to 50 percent of the variance in customer service scores. A disengaged employee can cost you 30 TIMES as much in safety-related incidents. And disengaged employees are over 85 percent more likely to leave. Engagement comes not from dollars but from more personal factors. .....more
Go Take a Vacation
As entrepreneurs and business executives, the mere thought of taking a vacation away from our responsibilities can stress many of us out. What between preparing to leave, worrying while away and facing unknown disasters upon our return, is really it worth going? Of course it is, but just as much for business reasons as for personal reasons. Time away breaks up your routine and can offer you a fresh chance to practice more control over both your professional and your personal life. .....more
Hitting the Ceiling
The inability to delegate, to “let go,” to trust that others can do a job well, puts a ceiling on the size of many small businesses. These firms grow rapidly, driven by the supercharged overachieving founder. They are profitable because control is tight and well within the span of the founder. .....more
How to Get Control of Your Organization
Over the years, we have enjoyed meeting with CEO Forum members to share what we have learned about building healthy, “high performance” organizations. Quite often, we have learned a great deal from their experience. During one Forum session, members were asked to list their biggest issues in running their respective organizations. The overriding theme from the responses was a feeling of “lack of control.” The Forum members were frustrated with many aspects of their enterprises such as weak leaders, ineffective sales, poor service, and inappropriate systems. For many, the business they had started as a dream was rapidly becoming a nightmare. .....more
Is Your Company a Bailout Candidate? -- Ten Clues to Watch
Membership in the growth company club has its privileges. However, with those privileges comes responsibility and the need for a more acute sense of the world around you. You may have been inducted for a number of reasons. Perhaps you invented a breakthrough product while your competitors were asleep at the wheel. Or you are really adept at expanding a loyal client base. Whatever the reason, it feels good to call the shots and to have completed the startup phase of your business. At this stage, it is only natural to wonder what you could ever gain from reading yet another post on marketing and planning. You have already learned all the hard lessons, right? .....more
Leadership Tips -- the Right Way to be Tough
One Ugly Meeting A few years back, I was one of the leaders in an IT organization that was struggling. We knew it too. A couple of projects had significant quality issues, and as a result we were missing dates and overrunning the budget. .....more
Leading Meetings 101
There are many meeting devils . . . Great teams eliminate such barriers by setting up specific, hard-and-fast rules for the following aspects of meetings. How can you transform your meetings from dull to dynamic? .....more
Lease Negotiations: The Six Biggest Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Who is your best friend when it comes to lease negotiations? Well, it’s not the friendly landlord. Did you know that last month alone an estimated 70% of the tenants that signed leases in our town of San Ramon, California did so without any representation? And the balance was represented by companies that have close ties with landlords. Would you hire a double agent to protect one of your firm’s biggest dollar commitments? .....more
Logos, Taglines & Branding... OH MY!
Brand seems to be the hot term right now with every agency claiming to be experts on the subject. When you start a conversation with someone one the topic of brand, invariably their minds and speak jumps to logos, taglines and promotion. Thoughts immediately go to the tactical side of things. This is true for not only for people and organizations thinking about their brand, but also with the majority of agencies seeking to do some “brand” work. .....more
No Need to Starve for Top Talent: Lessons on How to Eat Cake
It’s no wonder companies have trouble finding and keeping top talent when even the business experts didn’t know until recently that compensation isn’t the biggest motivating factor after all. Not that compensation is irrelevant; it needs to be competitive. But it’s only one of many things people consider when deciding whether to accept employment with your company, or whether to stay. .....more
Permission to Leap! 6 Steps to Business Growth Through Change
Change is essential to business success, and I’m not talking about the kind of change you drop in a vending machine. It’s the kind of change that too often brings fear, self-doubt and resistance to business owners. If you are wrestling with a business idea, whether it is a new product, marketing strategy, niche customer base or a whole new business division, here are steps you can take to move forward. .....more
Sales Tips for Small Business Startups
You have a dream and you are transforming it into reality by starting a business. You have a great product or service and a small but mighty staff. You worked day, night, and weekends to get the business up and running. Now what? As a sales consultant and small business owner, I’m often asked to suggest what the small business startup should focus on most. My answer? Focus on becoming profitable as quickly as possible and sustaining that position, not to mention your sanity, through consistent business development practices. Here are three sales tips I wish I’d known years and years ago. Good luck and super selling! .....more
The Importance of Discovering Your Plan B
If the founders of Google, Starbucks, or PayPal had stuck to their original business plans, we’d likely never have heard of them. Instead, they made radical changes to their initial models, became household names, and delivered huge returns for their founders and investors. How did they get from their Plan A to a business model that worked? Why did they succeed when most new ventures crash and burn? .....more
To Tweet or to Sell or If You’re Blogging How Can You Be Closing! Five Tipping Points for You to Decide.
There is a real divide between business people who swear by and swear at Web 2.0. So what should you be doing on-line (beyond the basics of a great website, SEO and customer communications?) Here are five tipping points for you to decide. .....more
Unlocking the Secrets of SEO
In an ideal world, rational decision makers would study the three to five competitors in a selection set, draw up little charts of benefits with check marks, and add up the scores. Dream on. What really happens on the planet Earth is the first link and description that sounds like a fit gets clicked on. That website gets examined for suitability; if it passes muster, case closed, research stops. Being third in most selection sets means two competitors have to fail first. Being tenth puts you on life support. .....more
When Brands and Technology Collide - Understanding the Fusion Factor
When we think of examples of great creativity at work in business, whether it be a hot new product, new service model, or new type of business altogether, we often sit back and wonder, how did they do it? .....more
Who Motivates the Motivator?
We are experiencing the most dramatic business climate changes since the 1930's. We are in a 100year flood economically and will not quickly return to the comfort and growth of the 1980s and 90s. For many companies, it will take years to return to 2007 revenue levels. For all companies and industries, Washington is changing the way we do business in such diverse areas as health care, union relationships and capital access. .....more