leadership

6 Key Ingredients for Leadership. Do You Have the Right Stuff?

The last time I searched and interviewed for a leadership job I had an interesting experience. In one particular instance the interviews had gone well with the hiring manager hinting to me that it was mine. “When you come aboard Chris, we will need to…“. My inside sources were telling me I had nailed the job as well. At the 11th hour, however, everything went silent. After pushing for information I received the “dear John” letter that I had not received the position. How could this happen?

The Power of Compliments.

The Power of Compliments.

Who doesn’t want to be recognized and complimented? I can tell you I do. My guess is so do you. One of the greatest tools for a manager, business owner, and/or sales professional to use is to sincerely offer compliments. A tool not easily understood by most and typically not used. Why?

sales burnout

Sales Burnout.

If you’ve been in any kind of sales position, a business owner, and/or manager for any length of time you’ve most likely experienced sales burnout. I always know I’m “in a bad place” when after winning a deal it’s a pain to fill out the contract. One of my sales people tell me about a deal they won and while I show excitement I’m not. These should always be good things, right? What happened to the passion? The “I can’t wait to go to work” attitude?

Favoritism

Coffee Killed the Sale – Showing Favoritism.

I was involved in a fairly large opportunity where they had an eight member team that was to recommend the vendor. After a long process, where many times we thought we were in the lead, we lost the deal. Heart breaker. During the sales process Starbucks Coffee was offered. Not a bad thing right? Except my salesman did it almost every week, sometimes a couple of times a week, to the person heading up the decision. There were some serious politics between this team that we weren’t exactly privy to. Prior to one of the meetings this same salesman sent a message to all eight asking what they would like to drink. He said “I already know what Jill wants how about the rest?” At that point she went out of her way to not show us any favoritism. Prior to this she had been our advocate.