A fellow mentor who is an expert in retail once shared with me that opening a shoe store is one of the riskiest businesses to start and operate because there are so many bad assumptions you can make. In a typical main street brick-and-mortar shoe store, you have to select and stock the proper proportions […]
How to Learn Demand: Zappos Story Read More »
Our five primary senses all work together, so it is important in business sales and marketing to stimulate them all if at all possible. However, with respect to evoking memories, the often overlooked sense of smell is the most powerful sense. If a person is tested on the details of a movie they watched in
The Smell of Success Read More »
It was 10:00 pm on April 18th, 1775. Two riders left Boston, Massachusetts, to ride out to Lexington and Concord to alert the militia that the British troops were on their way to capture Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Who were these two midnight riders? My guess is you came up with Paul Revere as
John Johnson grew up in a small shack with a tin roof in rural Arkansas. In an effort to give John more opportunities, his family moved to Chicago when he was 15 years old.However, coming from a poor area in Arkansas, his new classmates made fun of his accent and handmade clothes. To deal with
A Lesson in Perseverance Read More »
Andrew Carnegie was an industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry. He knew that wealth came from creative thinking and not from hard work. He spent six months a year traveling throughout Europe to have time to learn and reflect. Andrew worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad as a telegraph operator. He
The Power of a Person’s Name and Focus Read More »
I’m a fly fisherman, and anyone familiar with the sport understands that to land a fish using a fly rod requires a lot of skills. I think I like fly fishing because it is cerebral and has so much in common with B2B sales. In fly fishing, you have to understand in great detail the
Customer on a Line Read More »
Sometimes you cannot with any degree of certainty determine if someone is really telling you the whole truth, so you need to create a situation that will force the other party to reveal themselves. In the book How to Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the authors discuss how David Lee
How to Know if They are Telling You the Truth Read More »
What you drive says a lot about who you are and what you value. I often find it very useful to meet a new person at a location that requires them to drive there, such as a Starbucks. I try to arrive early and get a seat where I can observe the person drive up.
Have You Seen Your Customer’s Ride? Read More »
My wife frequents a bakery that uses punch cards as a loyalty reward for its customers. After you accumulate five punches you get a ten percent discount on your order when you redeem a completed card. Recently she was at the bakery. When she was ready to check out with a larger order than usual,
How to Win a Customer for Life Read More »
In Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” I first heard that God gave us two ears and only one mouth to remind us to listen twice as much as we speak. New salespeople like to jump right in and tell the prospective customer all about a product or service. However, a
Two Ears and One Mouth Read More »
