At its core, selling is communication and persuasion. To accomplish this, we must be likeable people. This means that you don’t have the luxury of bringing your problems to work with you. When you arrive at work, everything else goes away. You put on your game face. You focus on your customers and clients. Your only reason for existence is to serve…not to be served….

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Which type of leader are you? As I discussed in my book, ReTooled & ReFueled, there are essentially two leadership models. The first is power-driven leadership. This is where a person with power leads through fear and intimidation. At its worst, this is a slave master who abuses a slave. More often today, it’s a boss who is more focused on his own career than…

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These days, hotel owners routinely supply their guests with hospitalities and amenities that were unheard of 15 years ago. An example of going the extra mile. There’s a simple reason for this: competition. They know they have a vanishing inventory. Any room that goes unsold tonight is a sales opportunity that’s lost forever. This means everyone is trying to outdo the competitors. So it follows…

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FACT: Successful Leadership is a most counterintuitive commodity. It was in late 1981, the country still in a deep economic recession, that I first noticed a forlorn-looking office building on Nashville’s world famous Music Row. Our business was still young, and so was I—just 29. Money was tight. But, at a glance, I saw what could be done with this property. So, I inquired and…

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I’m about to arm you with a machine gun, so I want to begin with a warning. I always hesitate discussing techniques on closings until I’m sure that I’m not arming a sales terrorist. The techniques I’m about to share with you will help you make sales. That can be a good or a bad thing. It’s a good thing if you use these closings…

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One of the things I warn audiences about is a phenomenon where people all do the same thing. A prime example is people buying the same investments that lots of other people are buying…not because they make good logical sense, but because everyone else is doing it. At the base of this behavior is the fear that the crowd will succeed and the individual will…

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Over the last 16 years I’ve spoken to audiences hundreds of times on the topic of personal finance in my No Debt No Sweat Money Management Seminar™. I’ve written scores of articles on the topic and the No Debt No Sweat™ book has been a big seller. So it’s fair to say that I’ve got a real interest (and some experience) in the area of…

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As I’ve mentioned before, I had a 25-year career as head of a Nashville advertising and branding agency. In that business, when we developed a product’s brand, we began by searching for that product’s distinctive (Differential) benefit (Advantage.) This was that special benefit our product offered that other similar products did not offer. This is what made our product distinctive, noteworthy, and special. Through those…

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These days, hotel owners routinely supply their guests with hospitalities and amenities that were unheard of 15 years ago. There’s a simple reason for this: competition. They know they have a vanishing inventory. Any room that goes unsold tonight is a sales opportunity that’s lost forever. This means everyone is trying to outdo the competitors. So it follows that I’ve enjoyed some pretty good hotel…

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The earmark of contemporary Western culture is an unmitigated drive for instant gratification. That’s why we drive cars we can’t afford with money we don’t have to impress people at traffic lights we don’t know. We routinely see CEOs running up stock prices by doing things that will hurt their companies in the long-term. But there are, as there always have been, a relatively small…

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