5 Mistakes People Make in Sales Meetings – #2 Robot

October 2nd, 2015

The face-to-face meeting with a client, especially the first one, is the single most important event in the sales process. Stumbling block #2 during meetings with new potential clients (read #1-No Traction) takes on the business mantra: "It's not personal, it's just business." If you lose a piece of business with a client to a competitor, does it feel personal? When a startup entrepreneur gets angel funding, do you think it feels personal? When you’ve invested ten years building a team, does it feel personal when that team succeeds or fails? No matter what we think or say, part of being human is that most things that happen to us feel personal Read More...

Sales and Analogy

September 12th, 2015

“That reminds me of French Impressionism in the late 1800’s.” “What are you talking about?” said my future client. “In the second half of the 19th century,” I continued, “the annual Paris Salons controlled the commercial art world. If you didn’t go to the academy and paint in the traditional romantic style, you couldn’t get an exhibition at the Salon Read More...

The Paradox of Planning

September 29th, 2011

My seven year old is studying geography. She endeavored, recently, to draw a map of the world with continents, poles, the equator and compass directions. The result? If you can accept each continent as an amoeba-like lump, she nailed it. Europe, as we live in France, is placed in the middle. Then, as I named them, she scribbled in the locations of the oceans Read More...