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How to explain the world at a cocktail party

Talk about Inter-Temporal Discounting at a cocktail party

Want a cool expression to toss out at a dinner party the next time you find yourself in such a socially-elite situation? I’ve got one for you. It’s called “inter-temporal discounting.” Sounds cool, right? I bet you’re already interested. But what is it?… Continue Reading

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Core skill for salespeople: Verbal acuity

Traits of Good Salespeople

“Sales” is an insanely flummoxing concept to me. It’s pretty much everything at some level — because you can have the greatest product, the greatest process, or the greatest people in the world, right? But if no one can sell it and… Continue Reading

The New Business: RIP, Product and Inventory

RIP Inventory and Product

This shit may blow your mind. Consider: Uber is the world’s largest taxi company. It doesn’t own any vehicles. Facebook is the world’s largest media company. It doesn’t produce any of its own content. Alibaba is the world’s most valuable… Continue Reading

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Every piece of “sales advice” I read makes me want to smash my head with a brick

Let’s start here: I’ve never worked in sales. I’ve sold stuff, yes — I had a lemonade stand when I was eight, for example — and I’ve worked in roles that are essentially “sales” but don’t have the title of… Continue Reading

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Maybe we should stop talking about “lead generation”

Pretty interesting post on Forrester about “The Sales Enablement Forum,” which was apparently an event a few weeks back in Scottsdale, Arizona. Quick word of caution: if you’re very wary of business buzzwords, I’d probably avoid reading that post linked above… Continue Reading

Spend some actual time on your website’s FAQ page

Don't Ignore your FAQ page

Every company you ever speak to is somewhere in the process of redoing something about their website, and usually doing it mostly wrong — i.e. focusing on bells and whistles, and/or “something they saw on a comparison site,” as opposed… Continue Reading

“Loyalty company” and “company with loyalty program” = different

Customer Loyalty vs. Loyalty Company

This about sums it up. Here’s a story from a couple of years ago: when my wife and I were dating, we drove up the Mississippi from Jacksonville to Minneapolis. Ironically, two years after that trip, we ended up living… Continue Reading

Marketing Trends 2015: O-Sources vs. P-Sources

Marketing Trends 2015

There’s this book called Absolute Value, co-authored by Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen. They’re both professors at Stanford; there’s an article up now at the Stanford GSB website on how “the digital age rewrote consumer behavior,” which is something I think everyone inherently knows/understands,… Continue Reading