False modesty kills

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Tom

“I’m not sure if this is what you wanted?”
“It’s no problem if you don’t like it.”
“It’s not really what I do best, but I tried.”
Or the best one: “Naaaah, it’s not that good really, other people can probably do a better job.”

If you’re not sure if it’s what he wanted, why did you gave it [...]

Dress for the occassion

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Tom

“Don’t dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want.”
Some truth in there, but what if I worked at a convenience store putting groceries in a bag and I wanted to be a Wall Street broker?  Or if I’m a Wall Street broker but actually want a job at a scientific research [...]

It rarely pays off

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Tom

Bernie Madoff got sentenced today to 150 years in jail for probably on of the biggest fraud schemes in financial history.  After years of scamming investors, it was a financial crisis that brought it all to the surface.  It’s also the same week where a lot of kids get their final report card.  Where a few among them face [...]

Are you doing something special?

Posted on June 14, 2009 by Tom

It’s an easy question so it’s kind of weird that so many companies have a hard time finding a proper answer.  They complain about the economic crisis and how it keeps their customers away, but what are they doing special?  What’s keeping their customers from going to the competition?

Because no company is unique, or actually, no product [...]

Ye old happy shoe-shop

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Tom

There are a lot of difficult customers out there.  Demanding, complaining, never satisfied… in other words, if it wasn’t for the money they spent, you’d rather lose them.  I don’t like them either, they ruin my day and mess everything else up. 

There’s a small shoestore where I used to live that’s family owned for [...]

What do they need?

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Tom

What’s the most basic question when trying to make a sale?
“What does the customer need?”

That’s it.  It can’t get more basic than that.  We can throw any other number of reasons on the table, if that basic question returns a negative answer, why even bother?  Weird that so many companies seem to struggle with that [...]