Are You Venting or Just Making Excuses?
A colleague recently posted a rant about the quality of the leads she was handling on an automotive industry social network. As a part of her diatribe on her most recent batch of Internet sales leads, she gave some great examples of just how bad the leads really [...]
Filed in Business Situations, Sales Management One Response so far
Chaggle is the Next (Fill in the Blank)
Last month a colleague told me about this little technology startup that had carved out a pretty cool niche for themselves – and within ten minutes of hearing his description of Chaggle.com, I was happily using what should prove to be the next big thing on the World [...]
Filed in Digression, Recommended Products No Responses yet
Quick, Read This Email… Now!
Today I received another in a long line of email messages from a certain vendor touting their newest and greatest product improvement. This email, like all of its predecessors, arrived in my Outlook inbox as a message of High Importance. Because I receive just one in five hundred messages marked [...]
Filed in Business Situations, Digression, Sales Management One Response so far
New York Times – Hardcover Business Best Sellers – June 2009
The big story from the June 2009 New York Times Hardcover Business Best Sellers list has to be that Gladwell’s Outliers continues to dominate the rankings month-in, month-out. As we wrote in January, Outliers could be one of the best books released in [...]
Filed in Rankings No Responses yet
Last night the Pittsburgh Penguins defeated the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals to win the coveted Stanley Cup. Both teams deserved to be there, both played well throughout the season, and – as evidenced by a Game 7 in a best-of-seven-series – both teams were evenly matched.
Both [...]
Filed in Leadership Observations, Lessons from Pro Sports No Responses yet
Leadership Lessons from the Public Sector
There are reasons some people are lifelong public servants and others work in the real world. Whether it’s the military, public education, a state legislature or a municipal government: a job void of profit responsibility is generally void of any true accountability. Without accountability, leadership can become unnecessary and [...]
Filed in Leadership Development, Leadership News and Views, Leadership Observations, Management Training No Responses yet
The Effect of Ego on Leadership
At AskTheManager.com we’ve always held to the belief that you can learn more from bad leadership examples than you can from the good ones. It’s not really cynical to think this way; in fact, we believe it’s quite healthy. It’s like seeking out the silver lining. We’ve [...]
You’re Not Ready for Social Networking
A colleague who operates a retail franchise asked me my thoughts about incorporating social networking into his Internet sales efforts. Currently, he tracks about 35% of his sales directly to customers who first contacted his store via the Internet.
As I explained to my colleague (without trying to sound like [...]
Filed in Business Situations, Digression One Response so far
