“Now our global sales team can create customer relationships instantly from anywhere.” Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of YELP, in an ad for the Salesforce1 Mobile App in the Economist. “Run your business from your phone,” the ad goes on to say. Including the instant creation of customer relationships, with just a click. Of course, we get […]
Right after Michael Lewis’s 60-Minutes appearance to promote his new book Flash Boys I wrote a blogpost about it. The next day I received a phone call from a retail stock broker. His tone was somewhere between kindly uncle and exasperated old-timer, but his message was clear: “That Lewis guy’s obviously got an axe to grind,” said the caller. […]
Maybe your firm would like to sell to XYZ company and it turns out you have a college classmate who works there. Maybe you’ve become friendly with someone in a client company for which you’d like to do further work elsewhere in the organization. Maybe a neighbor down the street works for an organization you […]
Michael Lewis’s new book Flash Boys goes on sale at Amazon this morning, March 31. The headline, as he put it in Sunday’s exquisitely timed CBS 60 Minutes – “The stock market is rigged.” And it’s rigged in favor of high-frequency traders. Complaints about high frequency trading are not new. What is new, to nearly all of us, is […]
(This post first appeared on RainToday.com) Value propositions are unquestionably important in B2B sales, especially for large, complex, or intangible offerings. Some suggest a value proposition is the key component of successful sales. And most would say a value proposition is a necessary condition for success, if not a sufficient one. But I think we […]
In my last post, Building the Trust-based Organization Part I, I suggested that approaches to trust at the organizational level fell into several categories. Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, all captured some part of the puzzle, but none grasped the entirety of the issue. The five categories I listed were: 1. Trust […]
Do your eyes glaze over at that title? Mine do. I always click on such titles, but am usually disappointed when I get what feels like low-content or high fluff-quotient material. So I set out to tighten up the perspective. Tentative conclusions: sometimes the issue really is vague, fluffy, fog-sculpting content. More often, however, it’s […]
I recently got to meet Stephanie Olexa, a renaissance woman whose most recent incarnation is as an executive coach, at her company Lead to the Future. She has quite a bit to say about trust, and about two organizations in particular. Here’s our conversation. Charlie Green: Stephanie, you’re hard to pigeonhole. You’re an author, teacher, entrepreneur, […]
Lord, let me be the person my dog thinks I am. The pet-owners prayer. Sammy was nearly 15 years old when he departed this world in our arms Saturday morning. My ex- was there with me, as she was when we brought him back from the pound in 2000. You can even see in the pictures, […]
It’s a compelling headline: Stop Trusting Yourself. By Northeastern University psychologist David DeSteno, it’s featured in today’s NYTimes, and ostensibly shows that we mistakenly trust ourselves – that if anything, we mis-estimate our own trustworthiness more than that of others. Compelling indeed; but like sugar water, the headline high is brief. The problem is not bad psychology […]
You’ve graduated from Question Obsession 101. You’ve learned not to pepper clients with endless questions or craft that perfect “Keystone Arch Question” expecting miracles. You’re focusing on relationships, creating insights, and empowering clients. But have you fallen into the next trap? The Answer Trap. Many consultants who overcome question obsession swing to the opposite extreme, […]
Question Obsession: The Silent Sales KillerMay 6, 2025 - 5:00 pmHave you counted how many questions you ask in your typical client meeting? Do you find yourself carefully crafting the “perfect” question sequence before every sales call? Are your meeting notes filled with question frameworks rather than real insights? If so, you may be suffering from Question Obsession—a condition that’s quietly sabotaging your client relationships […]