A study by MIT Sloan Management Review shows that toxic corporate culture is the top predictor of employee turnover. In fact, it’s 10 times more important than compensation. Salary didn’t even make the top five predictors.

In February 2022, Netflix released an eye-opening documentary titled “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”. The documentary is centered around the fall of Boeing after the two back-to-back crashes of their newest 737 Max model — causing the deaths of 346 people on board only minutes after takeoff.

Have you ever been caught in the trap of making tradeoffs between doing well and doing good? A short-term focus on revenue at the expense of all else can be not only stressful and exhausting, but in the long-run hurt profit and growth. There is a better way.

Imagine that you’re a prospect working with two salespeople from competing companies at the same time: one uses hard sell tactics and the other uses soft selling techniques.

The first sends you an obviously canned email asking for a five-minute call, followed up with a demo, the demo with a pitch — and before you know it, they're asking for the close.

A simple take on prices is that they are an obstacle toward the purchase of a desired product or service. Companies, therefore, see a legitimate need to reduce “friction” in the transaction, which they accomplish by reaching into a seemingly bottomless bag of tricks, ranging from the subtle to the egregious.

Showing gratitude isn’t just a nice thing to do – it also makes an impact.

According to a study by Harvard, “expressing gratitude helps people feel positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.”

Being great at sales is, in part, being great at asking questions.

The reason – questions help you understand your buyer’s situation and, just as important, your buyer themselves. This helps you co-create a solution with them that provides value to both parties.

Do you feel like you’ve hit a wall in your success – either in your personal life or professional development? Like there’s nowhere else to go but down or sideways? Being stuck and not knowing what to do about it is one of worst feelings in life, no matter who you are and what you do. But the good news is there’s a way to get un-stuck, and it starts with you and your leadership ability!

What CEO has time to reflection? Few. And yet, I'm constantly urging those at the top to take a breather -- to meditate, think examine. In the words of researchers at MIT: "The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply and to make our intuitive knowledge shareable with others."

What CEO has time to reflection? Few. And yet, I'm constantly urging those at the top to take a breather -- to meditate, think examine. In the words of researchers at MIT: "The process of reflection helps us to develop our understanding more deeply and to make our intuitive knowledge shareable with others."

Though they might look like the same people, those who left the office at the start of the pandemic have dramatically different priorities, expectations, and needs than those who are returning today, according to Microsoft’s second annual Work Trend Index.

On the surface, it’s easy to see products as the center of your sales strategy. After all, products and services are the things you sell. It’s natural to build a strategy around them. You want to highlight their best features, compare to the competition, and price to make a profit. However, as easy as this sounds, it’s just not realistic.

Think about the last time you received service that was exceptional. And by exceptional, I mean exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. How you were communicated with is often what shapes your impression — good or bad.

Anytime you're selling, you're trying to balance the price you're asking for with the amount of value you're providing your customer. If you want to get the highest price possible, for instance, your goal is to convince your customer of the amount of value they're getting in exchange.

The fact is, better customer experiences are better for business. Great CX means your customers are happier, feel taken care of, and are more loyal—all of which leads to more profits. It takes the right tools and data to fuel those experiences, and a lot of it is already at your fingertips.

The old proverb says, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”

But too often, managers fall into a habit of simply giving their employees a fish — or in this case, all the answers. “Do as I say, and you will succeed” is, unfortunately, not an uncommon approach to management.

Matt Dailey, a software engineer for a data management company, was managing a team with an engineer who wasn’t performing well. This was clear to Dailey—and to the employee. Yet, as I describe in my new book Mastering Community, Dailey said he “wasn’t bridging the gap of how to make the situation better.” His team missed their deadline.

DISC is an incredibly popular assessment tool for a reason; it’s comprehensive, actionable, and easy to understand. But what happens when your DISC profile reveals that your current position isn’t a great fit?

One of the ways that you can determine this through a DISC profile is by looking at both your Natural and Adapted scores.

During the early stages of the pandemic, many B2B companies considered remote interactions as a temporary patch, a way to stay in touch with customers while sales reps were confined to their home offices. Now, it’s becoming clear that omnichannel is here to stay, and many businesses aren’t prepared for this permanent change.

My articles begin with analogies so we'll start by asking, has baseball changed? Games take longer, there is role specialization, starting pitchers rarely complete games, hitters are stronger, pitchers routinely throw in the mid 90's and there is a trend towards either hitting a home run or striking out. But it's still baseball. It is still played the same way. The changes are superficial.

And in the context of how it affects salespeople, has buying really changed?