This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. Your sales force automation and customer relationship manager software isn’t … [Read more...]

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to compete against our toughest rivals. We spend less time thinking about how we compete against the most dangerous threat to our opportunity: the status quo. The status quo always has a huge constituency. There are almost always more … [Read more...]

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. There are opportunities in your pipeline that aren’t moving. These … [Read more...]

Some opportunities are really zombies. From a distance, they look like they are living, breathing opportunities. But as you get closer, you discover that they aren’t really opportunities at all. They're already dead. Mostly these non-opportunities are really targeting or … [Read more...]

Some of the “opportunities” in your pipeline are dead. Or rather, they are undead. The undead, zombies if you will, look to be alive. They appear to be animated. They seem to always be moving. But they’re not really alive. Neither are some of your opportunities. It’s … [Read more...]

There is a scene in the movie Patton where General George S. Patton is racing across Italy in an attempt to beat Montgomery to Messina. His soldiers are trying to cross a bridge, and there is donkey and cart blocking the bridge. The donkey, proving its reputation for … [Read more...]

You can tell your people what to do. You can tell them that they have to do it. You can even give them a goal and a quota. Ultimately, you have no control over the people that work for you. This is true even if you have absolute, formal authority. At best, you have … [Read more...]

In this podcast, I interview Mike Sabin, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Solutions for Dun & Bradstreet. D&B, as you know, also owns Hoovers. Mike and I were brought together over the continued conversation that, in the very near future, the number of … [Read more...]

Leave this blog now. You don’t need to be here right now. You don’t need another new idea. You don’t need a new insight. You don’t need a new tool, a new technique, or a new strategy. You don’t need to do any more research. You don’t need to do any more reading … [Read more...]

I can’t imagine that anyone reading this blog doesn’t have an investment account with some brokerage firm. We know we have to make investments in our future, and we make regular contributions to our chosen investment vehicles. We take the asset that is money, and we invest it … [Read more...]