Avoiding Burnout as a Consultant As consultants serving an array of customers -- all who have hired us to solve pressing problems -- it is not unusual to experience burnout. This manifests in a variety of ways: procrastination, avoidance, negativity,…
Customers do you an enormous favor when they take the time to complain about your product or service. Most people simply stop engaging you or buying from you and you never know why. Chances are good that there is a…
Follow Your Heart A famous trapeze artist was instructing his students how to perform on the high trapeze bar. Finally, having given full explanations and instruction in this skill, he told them to demonstrate their ability. One student, looking up…
Do White Papers Work? Do White Papers still work as a direct response offer? Yes, says Nick Copley, Vice President of Bitpipe. “The big [magazine] publishers are scaling back the amount of editorial space they have to offer,” he explains.…
How to Murder the Entrepreneurial Spirit in an Organization Many of us have had work experiences in organizations that seem to stifle all innovation and entrepreneurial energy. Just as entrepreneurial organizations have certain characteristics in common, so do anti-entrepreneurial ones.…
It is surprising to no one that the way you ask a question can yield different responses. And in a customer relationship, asking questions and framing them properly can allow you to deliver far more value than simply taking a…
Can soft skills be taught and do they matter in the workplace? This is a story of two scientists. The first one is Bob. Too many of us know a brilliant scientist or engineer like Bob, who cannot articulate the…
Brainstorming growth with the Ansoff matrix A profoundly simple tool for mapping growth is called the Ansoff matrix. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansoff_Matrix. Entrepreneurs in government and industry use this model to map out potential growth paths. It…