Show Your Expertise in The Questions You Ask

A motivated fifth grader can memorize specifications and recite them on command.  With a bit of practice, they can also translate those features into benefits (what’s in it for the buyer). Five minutes with your favorite search engine, and you won’t even need the fifth grader. I’m not trying to insult fifth graders. I’m just […]

The Map is not the Terrain

A geodetic map shows terrain lines. It’s helpful if you plan to hike, bike, or ride across the land. An Atlas (the old kind printed on paper) sections the landscape into “states” or “countries” and highlights “cities” and parks and mountains and maybe roads. A road map sections the landscape in standard increments and highlights […]

The Gift of Persistence

I have to admit it. I’m a fan of the “Persistence Hunting Hypothesis.” The idea is that humans evolved as endurance runners. As the recent Olympic games have amply demonstrated, some of us are capable of incredible speed. But even the fastest will be shown the backside of any number of critters in a sprint, […]

Certain About One Thing

Werner Heisenberg was a giant of 20th-century physics. If you were collecting physicist trading cards, you’d want one of his. If you took high school physics, you probably remember hearing about “Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.” If not, here’s the simple version . . . You can measure where a particle is or where it’s going, but […]

Lost in Space. Or Not.

Like most people, I’m not following what is or isn’t going on at the International Space Station. I might be able to pick Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams out of a photo montage, but only if they were posing in flight suits and floating weightless. If none of this is ringing a bell, you are […]

Just Like You

Sometimes, the roles we inhabit can box us in or weigh us down. If I’m with my children and slip into “dad” mode and they into “child” mode, our interactions too easily head down well-traveled paths. If I meet you for the first time across a checkout counter, my “customer is always right” meets your […]

We All Want Control

“Control” and “connection” are paired but opposed ideas. A sales conversation that feels like a battle for control versus one that feels like a connection will yield very different outcomes. This motivation for control is deeply rooted in a desire for predictability, certainty, autonomy, independence, influence, and power. Most of us fear chaos, many fear […]

We Are What We Do, And We Do What We Think

As smart as we think we are, as stunning as our cognitive abilities are, we are easily fooled and tricked by our socialization and keening for acceptance, affiliation, and status. We think our thoughts are our own, but many have been borrowed, stolen, or planted by someone else. We think we are our own persons, […]

A Jargon A Day Keeps Real People Away

I blogged the other day about once being an ENTJ. A friend told me yesterday that the new term for being widowed is “Newly Singled.” When I started selling, we didn’t have “sales motions.” Now, I guess we do. My skin doctor recently told me I had a “Squamous-cell carcinoma.”  Skin cancer. An asset manager […]

I Used to be an ENTJ

I used to be an ENTJ. Now, I’m an INFP. Or maybe an ISFP. These, of course, refer to MBTI Personality Types. Actually, I don’t think I was ever really an E. I just played one. It’s not that I don’t T anymore. It’s just that I do more F. Or at least I’m more […]