Leadership

The 3-Month Strategic Plan

A few nights ago, I was having dinner with some friends, who are also business colleagues. A question came up at the table re how one the guys approaches strategic planning. He is the CEO of Financial Institution [a large Credit Union to be specific]. His answer was interesting based…

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Negotiation Lessons From A 4-Year-Old

Children are renowned for their constant negotiation of even the simple things in life. What continues to surprise me is the apparent sophistication with which they approach the task. How planned it is may be hard to judge, but the effectiveness is not. My son will be five in a…

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The Price To Win

You would be hard pressed to go through a Deal Review and not have this as a question asked by one of your Executives or teammates. What do you think the Price to Win is? In general, we will always be guessing, but some guesses are more informed than others.

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The Red Team

I was doing some work with two different clients in the past week where the concept of the “Red Team” came up in conversation. Rooted in military history, a Red Team is an inside group that explicitly challenges a company’s strategy, products, and preconceived notions. It frames a problem from…

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Fail Less or Win More

If you were given a choice, looking at the effectiveness of sales organization, would you rather lose less or win more? The word “both” was likely just echoing in your head. What we know to be true from both external data sources and the work we do with clients [large…

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WHAT IF GROWTH WAS NOT AN OPTION

I am privileged to get to speak and spend time with hundreds of senior executives every year in various forums. There are smart and driven people as a general rule. There are several common themes that I get to see across this group, regardless of the size of company, industry…

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The Art of the Fast Start

It is January 2nd and for most, the first day of the new business year. As an Executive or a Sales Leader, are you and your teams ready to roll? The implication of the question is that there was a lot of thinking and planning done in Q4 to get…

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