My wife chose some beautiful new shrubs and flowers and I was digging the holes to plant them in the garden.  The largest shrub required the largest hole and it was to be placed in an area of the garden that I knew was quite rocky.  Sure enough, after just three shovel fulls of dirt, I hit rock and it was bigger than both my shovel and the hole.  I was stuck.  Short of finding a new location or bringing in a Bobcat to excavate,  I need to figure out how to get unstuck ..read more

My wife and I were on a Mother's Day walk when we saw something I had never seen before.  I should have snapped a picture but I didn't, and could not find a single picture on the internet that captured what we saw.  The image above certainly doesn't do the view justice ..read more

All the requirements have been met. We have already seen these factors occur across the board: Low QoQ GDP.  High interest rates.  Massive layoffs. Inflation. Stock Market down. Cost-cutting.  We are now seeing these events in sales organizations: Missed forecasts.  Closing delays.  Failure to hit quotas. Order cancellations.   We know what doesn't work in a recession.  The economic crisis of 2008-9, and the Covid lockdowns of 2020-2021 showed us that when companies focus on cost-cutting instead of growing revenue, revenue declines - sharply.  ..read more

The landscaper called me over to look at a tree on our property.  He showed me the enormous hole and I asked, "What did that?" "Woodpecker," he said. On one side of the tree we had this perfectly cut, huge hole, and the other side of the tree had many small holes.  I learned that the Woodpecker that made the small holes were looking for food while the Woodpecker that made the huge hole was making a home.  Hunters and Farmers.                                            ..read more

Our son's college baseball season is winding down and we think they'll make the playoffs for the second straight year.  As I think back to high-school baseball, a couple of things came to mind that have a lot to do with sales development. Mike attended two high schools.  His first high school baseball coach saw his potential, calling him up to play on the varsity team when he was still in the 8th grade. He was a starter that year, as well as his freshman and sophomore years.  Coach Mark was a good judge of talent, he was able to develop the limited talent he had, and his player ..read more

As we do each Friday in March and April, my wife and I drove to upstate New York to watch our son's college baseball games.  But this article isn't only about normal, it's also about the abnormal in both baseball and sales ..read more

As a Nor'Easter barreled across Central Massachusetts today, a few interesting storm-related happenings were analogous to some sales-related occurrences. This article will explore two weather-related analogies ..read more

What kind of car should you drive? Answering that question with anything other than, "It depends," is irresponsible because there are so many variables.  Choosing a car depends on budget, family size, how much stuff you load into your car, the length of your drives, the logo/ego influence, fit and function, ergonomics, appearance, perceived value, reliability, cost to drive it (gas/electric/mileage), and so much more.    If that makes senses, why do companies struggle when I am unable to instantly tell them what their win-rate or closing percentage should be? There are so many ..read more

Today's article is different from most of my other articles because there is no opening analogy, very little data, and a complete lack of humor. It's such a serious article I was ready to delete it before I clicked the publish button. If you don't like the subject, the content or the writing, it's OK.  This needed to be written ..read more

I began debunking sales articles when the first ones predicting the death of selling appeared circa 2008.  Back then, new digital marketing companies were telling everyone that salespeople would be replaced by inbound marketing.  "Inbound is King," they said. Later, articles predicting the end of selling became both more prolific and more specific including the certain death of: Solution Selling Cold Calling Consultative Selling Sales Process SPIN Selling and more. If you looked closely and skeptically at who was writing the articles and who the writers worked for, you could recog ..read more