Choose your customers wisely

In the mid 1960s, a small local bank named Crocker Bank was determined to expand their business. They had a prominent and wealthy clientele but also an aging group of customers. They wanted to diversify and attract other customer segments. This is not unlike many businesses today, but the questions looms: Are all customers good customers? Read more

Black Belt, schmack belt, why Six Sigma?

A quick Google search says we have over 50,000 options for sales seminars to teach sellers how to win more deals. Of all the options, would you expect to find the General Electric (GE) system known as Lean Six Sigma to be included? You should. Xerox’s recent success with 8,000-plus sellers is rooted in these principles. Read more

Don’t be too busy to say thank you

Does it ever seem to you that “all you ever needed to know you learned in kindergarten?” Saying “thank you” is one of those important life lessons. In the overstressed, busy world where many of us live and work, sometimes, saying thank you may not seem a high priority. Read more

Free PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #030: Sparklines

Each week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This week we bring you a template inspired by the Microsoft Excel functionality called Sparklines which allows you to put a chart or graph in a single cell. Read more

How to make a presentation interactive

As a presenter, you always want to know your audience. When presenting to hundreds of audience members at a large event, you could troll the lobby and get a feel for how some will react to your content. Some venues may even offer interactive polling where you could open some questions and get immediate feedback from audience members holding voting devices. Read more

Use the principles of war in your next presentation

In business, we may tend to think of our competitors as “the enemy.” But, we rarely engage our competitors directly. Rather, we fight a two-front battle against forces that have the power to utterly destroy our ability and will to fight. Those forces are one, our customer, and two, ourselves. Read more

Free PowerPoint-Tastic Templates – #029 Personal Branding Business Etiquette

Each week, the Fast Track Tools training company and the Cubicle Ninjas design firm work together to publish a template that makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas. This week is the fifth of a five-week focus on personal branding. Read more

Small ideas grow into big ideas

The debate over what is true in the recent hit movie Social Network will go on for years. The fact that Facebook has grown at extreme rates since the site was launched is not debatable. Facebook has more than 550 million users. If it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world. Read more

One sales enablement initiative most likely to make you wish you’d never heard of sales enablement

This is the second part of a post I am pleased to share from Sharon Little, Director, Global Field Communications, VMware, Inc. In our last post, Sharon shared three components relevant to sales enablement. Today, I am happy to share Sharon’s ideas about what she calls “the one sales enablement initiative that most likely to make you wish you’d never heard of sales enablement.” Read more