Sales and Marketing Newsletter 216 – This week In-house training, Sources, Birthday cake

GREG’S BUSINESS GROWTH NEWSLETTER #216
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Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week.

In this issue:

– Techniques for FIT
– Being Human
– Random Stuff

Techniques for FIT
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• Opportunity cost is readily applied to our monies but not so much to our time. Next week you’ll have 168 hours and you have to sleep sometime so plan accordingly.
• Not all the people you bump into will share your point of view. It’s alternately fascinating and frustrating when you meet them but get curious, don’t dismiss right away because it leads to new thoughts popping into your head.
  

• The best training program for business development is the one you develop in house based on your own needs. It starts with describing your own sales cycle, describing your customer’s decision process, and stitching them together.
• He thinks this is terrible. She thinks there’s no need to worry. It’s all in the future and no one knows who is right, so it’s best to put precautions in place and think through possible first steps if it happens. Hence, the bleach and post it notes.

Being Human – Primary sources
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“There is much difference between imitating a man and counterfeiting him.” – Benjamin Franklin

For the last few years we’ve been helping a relative judge his history fair. He teaches junior high and holds an event for the kids at our local school and the kids are all above average and very good-looking. I don’t teach but like teachers and I’ve learned the kids have trouble with primary sources. Trouble finding them and trouble understanding what they are.

If your school-days are far enough behind you that you’re thinking, “primary?” I tell the kids primary sources had direct connections to the event, and secondary sources had contact with primary sources. Like, the primary source went to the art show that night, and the secondary source wrote a critique on art shows from the period as a whole.

I bring this up because if you’re able, you should force your people to find the primary source. They tried to teach us in grade school, but it helps to be reminded. Tell your people, “be prepared to cite your sources and show your work,” because when we go to fix a problem it’s going to help with evidence. As you know, good evidence saves time and effort down the road.

Good stuff.

Random stuff
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“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.” Woody Allen

Another year, another birthday.

This year I start it with cake. My bride suggested it as a joke, and I thought, why not? I have a piece for breakfast. I have a piece for lunch. I go to a client’s office, and they have cake for me, so I power through a piece (minus the frosting). I experience what must be a sugar rush during an introductory meeting with a prospect because I am mid-story when I think, wait, what am I saying? and stop talking. She says, I’m a little confused, and I say, me too. (this is the same meeting where I shift in my seat, think I see something light colored in my lap only to find out my zipper is down.) Last, I go to a nice family dinner, but when the moment comes, can’t do it. I just can’t bring myself to order dessert.

Almost made it.

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