Questions & Meetings
What questions are your meetings trying to answer? How many meetings have become tired, stale, past their sell by date. Think about it. What questions are your current meetings answering? – General, bland stuff that leads to zero insight, zero change? What happened...
Can Small Companies Beat the Big Guys?
Ben Worthen at the WSJ wrote a very compelling piece last week – Start-Ups Emerge as Tech Vendors of Choice. Owners of sub $50m businesses should take note of Ben’s points: Vanguard Health Systems spends $100m on technology and buys from the Big Guys....
I’ve no budget
How often does your sales team tell you the deal fell over because there was no budget? We need to drill down on that a little further. When a budget is created do you think that every single line item has a supplier’s name penciled in? In fact often the type of...
Starting Salaries
You get down to one or maybe two shortlisted candidates and you are wondering what package to offer him or her. What do you next? State the package on offer? Ask what her current package is? Contrarian thought of the day. Ask her what base salary she would like to...Scaling and Growing
I feel Salesforce is growing but Google is scaling. I believe Facebook is growing but Apple is scaling. The Inc 5000 was just announced for 2012. The 5000 fastest growing private companies in the US. The question is, how many of these businesses are scaling and how...
The Timing of When You Do Something Matters
The ability to perform tasks well is directly related to when you do them. Running every night at 7pm after work would never work for me. However meeting a buddy at 6.15 am and doing 4 to 6 miles on the trails works almost every time. Finished and showered by 7sh...
Time Management Tips for Sales Teams
One of the scarcest of resources anyone has, especially busy salespeople, is time. Planning your quarter is essential to maximize your sales performance. Below are listed tips to help you maximize your time and your income! Clean up the forecast Decide the Priority...
Checklists
Atul Gawande wrote a beautifully crafted book, The Checklist Manifesto. As we strive for success in all of our projects let me encourage you to consider his thesis: There are two types of checklists -A DO-CONFIRM checklist – team members perform their jobs from...The Stunning Failure of Acquisitions
The WSJ last week highlighted the evidence that some of our largest rock star brands just can’t get acquisitions right. HP, Boston Scientific, Nasdaq OMX Group, Frontier Communications Corp and Republic Services have all achieved the amazing result of paying so...Operational Excellence For Exits
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Acquirers Need a Playbook
Valuation Gaps & How To Close Them
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