Articles & Resources
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When Your Skill Set Holds You Back. Dr. Jim Kestenbaum has been in my life for the better part of 10 years. A boss hired him to work with me for a year, and the sessions we engaged in changed the course of my career, how I worked, and how I saw myself. Because of…
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4 Days in a Heart Hospital And my new 10 rules for life that resulted. *Note: if discussions that touch on spirituality in any shape bother or offend you, this might. ** Notes 2 and 3: If you’re looking for something about sales, or strategy, or people management, you’ll be disappointed. Ditto if you want…
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Board Game Strategy for Sales and Business. Sales are mostly checkers, and everything else is chess. My firstborn, my 10-year-old son, whom I love, just recently finished going 10-1 against me in chess. In fairness, I’ve never played before he taught it to me in stress-free chess, or something like that. In some fairness, he…
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The Manager’s Concern Is it in the right place? A solid manager I coach recently shared a challenge he has right now. Him: “I was just given our number for the year.” Me: “And?” Him: “It’s big. It’s really big.” Me: “Ok. How do you feel about that?” Him: “I’ve got concerns, man.” Me: “Do…
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When to use email? At least in sales. At least once a week, a sales coaching client will send me a note that reads, “Adam, can you look at this email from (fill in the blank)? I want to win this account, but am not sure how to respond.” Sometimes, the seller will include an…
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How to do compensation? At least for sales. In the last 8 weeks, four companies have asked me about compensation design for salespeople. The reasons for the conversations varied from company to company. In one case, the role the CEO had imagined for sales had changed, and he needed to invest more in post-sales service….
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Three (New?) Ways To Pursue Your Customers. That Your Competitors Probably Are Not. Someone asked me to address a group of CEOs and owners on sales and growth in early January. Not a big deal, usually, as I’ve done this so many times before. Show up with a canned talk, adjust the slides a little,…
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Sales Kickoffs are Usually a Waste How to fix that? Twice in the last 3 weeks, I’ve been asked about running sales kickoffs. How to organize them, structure them, what to cover, the whole 9 yards. Here’s the blunt truth for most companies, from startups with 5-person teams to middle-market companies with teams of 20+….
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Hire the Best Salesperson with One Simple Change. NOTE: Jason Lippman of nFusion Capital contributed heavily to this piece. “We’d love to put in a new fence for you, but we can’t even look at getting to you for 4 months. We are booked up, and just can’t get new people to fill out additional…
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Founders, Don’t Hand Off Sales. At least not too soon. No matter how badly you want to. I am asked the following approximately 2-3 times per month. It’s a common question from founder-owners of all sorts of companies. And it comes when they’re just starting, maybe finding product-market fit, growing, or really wanting to ramp…
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