Stop defending your Passion
Passion and Entrepreneurship go hand in hand. Read any blog about entrepreneurship, or written by an entrepreneur, and you’ll find an abundance of it. Do a Google search on entrepreneurial qualities and you’ll find passion at the top of many of those lists. Passion is considered so important to success, that we entrepreneurial coaches actually [...]
The Pitch Staircase
There isn’t a whole lot of mystery as to what should go into a basic investor pitch, yet the entrepreneurs I coach have a habit of getting in their own way. I’m not sure if it’s because I deal mainly with early stage, high-tech start-ups and scientists/engineers love details, or whether people just want to [...]
A Simple Trick for Strengthening Customer Relationships
Continuing the Customer Satisfaction theme of late, DCO reader Lauren sent me an article related to my recent post asking if your Customer Satisfaction questions have meaning. Thanks Lauren! As I read it, the article set out two important points: A relationship that has had a problem, and the problem was handled well, is a [...]
Do what you say you’re going to do
I was excited to get home tonight and head out for the evening’s run for a number of reasons. First, after some morning showers, it turned out to be a gorgeous Spring day – sunshine and mid-50′s. Since Sunday is my long run day and Monday is my traditional day to recover, physically I’m usually [...]
If we did it for them…
There are many ways to learn, and part of the path to personal and professional excellence is not only making the commitment and focusing on self-development, but also discovering and creating learning opportunities. While we can create many of our learning opportunities on our own, I also believe that learning opportunities perfectly suited for where [...]
10 seconds to stand out
Here’s a quick tip if you use LinkedIn. When you invite someone to join your network, personalize the invitation. How tired do you get of seeing: David, I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. – Some Contact There’s nothing wrong with accepting the default message and it’s certainly a benefit of [...]
Making sure your business plan is understood
Here’s a great tip I hadn’t seen before, straight from review of a business plan submitted for funding. Embed a link to a video from within the business plan. This particular business plan had a link to a Vimeo video on their cover page. The video used icons to represent constituencies and functions of their [...]
Survive the recession one customer at a time
I used to work for a large, multi-national consulting firm. I was with them for twelve years, the last three spent in business development and sales. One of the “tricks” for developing customer and prospect relationships, was to send a handwritten note after first meetings and important milestones. My employer had no problem ordering nice, [...]
