The Game of Work / Coonradt 5-7

5 People will pay for the privilege of working harder than they will work when they are paid.

7 Why will people pay for the privilege of working harder:

First, in recreation goals are clearly defined. The desire result is clear and easily measured.

Second, in recreation the scorekeeping is better because it's 1) more objective, 2) Self-administered, 3) peer audited, 4) dynamic and 5) it allows the players to compare current personal performance with past personal performance as well as with an accepted standard.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 290-294

294 Time management strategies

• Focus and reject. Switch on--Issues at Hand, Switch off--mail, dinner parties, phone calls, leaky roofs
• Use your day right.
• Rest and or/frolic
• Pursue mindless interruptions. Studies suggest the most effective bosses thrive on unscheduled interruptions; the least effective chiefs program their days down to the minute. Practical translation: Allow for (plan for) productive diversions. Take occasional off-the-wall calls that might provide a highly profitable insight.
• Be true to yourself

The City of Influence / Stewart 68-74

74 Learn: To come to understand

"Learning is the beginning stage of all relationships--learning what people like, don't like, or how they think and feel. It's especially important during this stage to try to understand the other person's wants and needs"

The Customer Revolution / Seybold - Part 2

How to Survive in this Profound Revolution:

• First, recognize every business is now an e-business.
• Second, realize there are no e-customers, only customers.
• Third, adopt new, dynamic partnering relationships as customers’ needs evolve.
• Fourth, be prepared to participate in customer-led, self-organizing communities and to respond flexibly as customer behavior reshapes your industry.

MAKE IT EASY FOR CUSTOMERS TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 287-290

290 When I'm preparing for a seminar, reading the history of the industry that I'll be talking about is the single most valuable thing I do.

Consultative Selling/Mac Hanan 44-end

45 Box Two managers are always in a proposal mode with Box One funders, claiming a stake in the funding process for their own businesses or functions. Box One favors them on the basis of the strategic fit of their proposals with corporate growth policy and their adherence to financial objectives for each dollar.

46 The Box Two managers who get the most funds the most often are the best internal sellers. If you can help them get even more, or more often, they will "go partners" with you to do it again and again.

Consultative sellers succeed or fail on their ability to ally themselves with their Box Two counterparts.

The City of Influence / Stewart 67-68

68 The paradox is that by ensuring the success of other, pollinators also guarantee their own.

The Customer Revolution / Seybold - Part 1

BUSINESSES NEED TO BE MORE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC THAN PRODUCT-CENTRIC IN ORDER TO THRIVE IN THE NEW ECONOMY.

Embrace the Customer Revolution and Thrive in the Customer Economy. Unless you act now to focus on the quality and consistency of the customer experience you offer, your firm will be hopelessly lost in the turbulence. Customers have taken matters into their own hands, maximizing their power of choice. They prefer custom-designed experiences. They want good service, fair prices, and innovative offerings. If they don’t get it from your business, they will go elsewhere, and will tell the world too. Adapt to changing customer desires in real-time. A customer-focused culture attracts and retains employees because these companies are more fun to work in than those that are product-centric and bureaucratic.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 285-287

287 ...one of the brightest people I've ever met, he asks the dumbest questions.

And, as fellow humans, they respect enormously the fact that you do have the gumption to ask those hopelessly naive questions. So ask. Even if you think you know.

We all need potent persuasive skills to rope in supporters from time to time.

• Practice makes better
• Forget all the conventional rules but one. Stick to topics you deeply care about, and don't keep your passion buttoned inside your vest. An audience's biggest turn-on is the speaker's obvious enthusiasm.
• Stories, stories, more stories. The best speakers...tell short, striking vignettes...often little more than strings of such vignettes, loosely linked by an outline and in support of just one or two big ideas.
• For heaven's sak, don't write it out.
• Don't even think about getting it right.
• Breathe
• Get away from podium. Then wander--around the table, into the crowd, about the platform. Look comfortable, and your audience will be more comfortable, too. (Yes, this does take lots of practice--but it works.)
• Loosen up, you're not going to convince em anyway. So try to relax, enjoy yourself, and come across as a passionate champion for your thing which is just what the audience wants you to do.

Consultative Selling/Mac Hanan 43-44

44 Consultants sell money, not products. They transact returns from investments, not sales. Their price is an investment, not a cost. Their performance is measured by the amount and rate of the customer's return, not by product performance benefits. They work inside their customer businesses as partners, not from the outside as vendors. They relate directly to customer line-of-business managers and business function managers, not purchasing agents. They work at these middle management levels on a long-term, continuing basis, not from bid to bid. Their focus is not on competitive suppliers but on competitive profit making for their customer partners and for themselves.

Customer-Manager Hierarchy

Box 1. Top Management--develop objectives, invite proposals, apply criteria based on ROI and cash flows, Allocate funds and set controls.

Box 2. Middle Management--generate investment proposals based on ROI and cash flows, Recommend specs, implement.

Box 3. Purchasing Management--Invite proposals, apply criteria based on price performance specs, Recommend vendors.

Box One is the home of the "C" Level"

Box Two managers

You must help your customer partners get more funds, and get them more quickly and more surely so that they can increase revenues or margins and decrease more costs.

Box One is Box Two's funder.

The City of Influence / Stewart 61-67

62 How can you resist someone who likes you just because.

67 Governors are pollinators. Instead of living like the mosquito, always on the hunt for the next transaction without any regard for the long-term relationship, they always leave behind as much or more than they take.

So it isn't wrong to get what you need. ...You just need to give back.

21 of 21 Suggestions for Success /H. Jackson Brown...

21 Suggestions for Success /H. Jackson Brown,Jr.

1. Marry the right person.

2. Work at something you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent.

3. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

4. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

5. Be forgiving of yourself and others.

6. Be generous.

7. Have a grateful heart.

8. Persistence, persistence, persistence.

9. Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary.

10. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

11. Commit yourself to constant improvement.

12. Commit yourself to quality.

13. Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power, or prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect.

14. Be loyal.

15. Be honest.

16. Be a self-starter.

17. Be decisive even if it means you’ll sometimes be wrong.

18. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.

19. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.

20. Take good care of those you love.

21. Don’t do anything that wouldn’t make your mom proud.

The Pursuit of WOW/Peters 284-285

285 Working with reporters

• Change your story when the story changes.
• Don't get worked up about out-of-context quotes
• Return phone calls promptly
• The media is your customer
• Forget corporate guidance
• Take the long-term view. It's repeat business that counts on the commercial side
• Know that there are jerks in the media.
• Don't take your press releases seriously; the press doesn't
• Allow the media access to "real people"
• Say something fresh:

Consultative Selling/Mac Hanan 39-43

41 Maintaining a superior norm is crucial to your branding.

43 Key account sales representatives who want to penetrate the top customer tier must position themselves to discuss, document, and deliver their answers to the question, "How much profit will you add?"

The City of Influence / Stewart 59-61

61 Governors and mayors don't force residents to live inside their cities of influence. People choose to build there because they know the city is governed by someone who genuinely cares about them as a person.

Develop Relationships Just Because.

Governors understand that they will benefit from building strong relationships; the difference is that they don't build those relationships with specific outcomes in mind. While they know that opportunities will flow as a result of the newly acquired trust, they haven't predetermined what those look like. They build relationships just because they value people, plain and simple.

Can you think of a time where you've built a business relationship without a forecasted return on investment?