The difference between relationship building and selling is asking for the sale. How many salespeople do you know who are good at building rapport and building relationships but don't generate good sales numbers? Here are some questions to ask yourself to see whether you're on track to close a sale, and here's a tip of the hat to Al Simon at Sandler Training. Have you established rapport with your prospect? If they don't see you as both competent (you know what you're talking

Having spent a lot of my life researching what makes people happy and also working with wealthy families, imagine my surprise when I discovered that wealthy people are the least happy folks in America! Yep, that's what the research shows. How can this be true? I know plenty of business leaders who think wealth and happiness are exactly the same thing. No one would argue that being poor leads to happiness, but it turns out that poor people in America are actually happier than

There are lots of family businesses, not only in this country but around the world. For starters, all organizations are generally patterned after the family unit. The parents (Board Chair, CEO) have final decision making authority and are charged with looking after the welfare of the entire family (business). While employees certainly aren't to be treated like children, they do have less power in the situation just like in a family. Overall, good leaders are like good parents

Technology isn't my strong suit by a long shot, but I know a guy... You can't read the news today without a story of who's been hacked and the prodigious amount of money it cost them. The city of Atlanta was hacked and it cost $17,000,000 plus valuable lost data that can never be retrieved. Cyber criminals used to steal your data to sell it to other folks, but now they've figured out that it's easier and more profitable just to sell it back to you. Imagine that you lose all a

Susan was feeling overwhelmed. She was relatively new to her leadership position, and she desperately wanted to be successful in her new role. In her search for resources, she had found a seemingly endless and confusing array of books and training workshops that seemed to promise to equip her to rule the world in 30-90 days. One facility insisted there were at least sixteen dimensions to good leadership; another author posited that there were a minimum of twenty-one irrefutab

Based on my 207 decades in business (OK, just 3), I literally wrote the book on leadership, happiness and profit. It is a fun and elegant "how to" book for leaders who want to be happier, make more money, and do more good by filling the world with great products and services. Dramatic revenue growth is a given, but you can do it without undue stress or risk. Get the tips, tools, and techniques you need to make your dreams of a sustainable high-performance business come true.

Okay, so all leaders initially suffer from Founder's Disease. Whether you own your own business or you work in someone else's, you're probably bright, hardworking, and good at a lot of things. That makes it awfully hard to delegate responsibility and authority to someone else, because deep down inside you pretty much know that they couldn't possibly do the job as well as you could. Can I get an "amen?" If you want to build an organization, and you don't delegate well, however

Are you thinking about becoming an entrepreneur? Are you already one but things aren't going as well as you'd prefer? Do you have the mindset skills listed below? If not, how are you going to acquire them? Belief in yourself. Nobody is confident in every situation; instead this is the belief that you can figure out what you don't know and achieve your goal. Setting achievable goals and positive self-coaching are the most important elements of this skill. Passion for something

The Beatles broke up way too soon. John Lennon and Paul McCartney were one of the most prolific and successful songwriting teams in history--just imagine the music they could have produced if their partnership had lasted longer. The Rolling Stones purportedly have fought like cats and dogs over the years but are still together. What has made the difference? I have a friend who says that the only ship that's guaranteed to sink from the day it's launched is a partnership. I'm s

No, this is not a real bulletin (sorry Mr. Blank), but imagine if it were. If we assume that the main goals of the Atlanta Falcons are: 1) to be profitable, and 2) to win championships (which tends to help with profitability), then recruiting really cheap players makes no sense at all. And yet I've seen CEO's do this all too often. They treat personnel costs as a line item in a budget (which, of course, it is) that needs to be minimized to "save money" and "increase profitabi

Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean states that many things turn out best when practiced with moderation and with balance. Unfortunately this has been over-expanded over time to "All things in moderation," but most would agree that even a moderate amount of heroin is not likely to turn out well for you in the long term. Seems like it would be more fun and easier to remember to call this maxim something like "The Principle of Balance & Justification (PB&J--peanut butter & jelly),

The correct answer is "almost always." The top decision maker is always the problem (and the solution), and that's most often the CEO. You might be thinking: What if there's a board of directors that is responsible for strategy and the CEO is only responsible for execution?What if there's a recession and the entire market for the product or service has dried up? What if the business is under-capitalized? I would respond: CEO's can always leave if they think the strategy

Has there ever been a more inspirational story than Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol? I don't think so. Ebenezer Scrooges' overnight transformation from unhappy to happy is truly supernatural (but what else would you expect with all those ghosts involved?). So what are the personal and business takeaways from this story? Let's refer to The Ebenezer Scrooge Grid below: In the "Ebenezer before" quadrant, our hero was rich but unhappy, and in the "Ebenezer after" quadrant he's

I love working with family businesses. The very challenge of it will make inexperienced consultants lose their nerve (or should). Not only do you have the challenges of running a profitable business, but you also have the challenges of preserving incredibly valuable family relationships. When things go well, though, it makes success all the sweeter. I have a strong bias that, in terms of long term happiness, family relationships are much more important than business relations

Mixing love and money is mighty tricky (please feel free to quote me on this, as long as you leave "mighty" in). There are a thousand ways to make a buck, but you only have one marriage (I assume). It's challenging to create a happy marriage, and it's challenging to create a successful business. Combining the two becomes challenging squared. I get it. Family businesses are a huge part of our economy. There are 5.5 million family owned businesses in the US. Family businesses a

Maps are great. Think about it, if you don’t have a map you can spend a lot of time just wandering aimlessly from place to place trying to get where you want to go. To make things even worse, if you don’t have a clear destination then every place is just as important as the next; you have no way to prioritize them or pick one over the other. However, if you know where you’re headed and you know what places you need to pass through to get there, then your choices become easier

John, the COO, looked troubled as he sat in the conference room with Susan, his friend and confidant and one of the promising young associates in the firm. “You know, the partners really have done a pretty good job of building this firm, and we should be grateful for the opportunities they have provided us. They’re good, decent people who have always tried to do the right thing. However, they’re beginning to think about retirement, and I’m worried that we don’t have a sound g