1. I’ve never heard of your company before.  What do you make here?
2. Can you buy lunch? I’m a little short this month.
3. Do you have any decision making power or should I be talking with your boss?
4. Let me tell you about our product, then, if there is time, I’d like to hear about your needs.
5. I hope you are ready to buy because I really need to make this sale to keep my job.
6. I know what you want to hear, so let me cut right to the price.
7. Your predecessor called me a jerk and refused to do business with me.
8. Can we get everyone who is interested together now so I don’t have to do my presentation more than once?
9. I know our price is high and our quality is low but that won’t really affect you because our delivery is so slow.
10. Did you hear that our stock price crashed today?

Read full article here.

A recession survivor’s advice for 2012

I hear a lot of apprehension and doom-and-gloom in the business news these days. So, for this column, I went in search of a local company that was hit by the recession and managed to bounce back. What I found should give you some inspiration going into the New Year.

“Running your own business is not for sissies!” are the first words out of Lead Newcombe’s mouth. Newcombe’s company, Newco Solar Solutions (www.newcosolarsolutions.ca), opened for business in 1975. She joined the company in 1985; in 2006, she purchased it – and became president of the newly named Newco.

The company started off doing mobile auto tint installations. Then it opened a shop and branched out to do residential and commercial film installations. As the business grew, the company added window coverings to its product line. Eventually Newco started manufacturing its own window coverings. Now the company has a sales team, a manufacturing team and an installation team, in addition to the head-office staff.

To read the rest of the article, including Leah Newcombe’s Rules for Business Growth in 2012,  click here.

“I think patience, by far, teaches you what to do. The mistake people make is they try to do everything. Dave Farr, our CEO, says that if you have a to-do list of 10 things, rip it and do three. Just do three…

Read the rest of her advice here.

Love some the ideas, some of them not so much.  But I always find this slide show good for a big dose of motivation!

Today’s video is all about discomfort – something most people normally run the other way from.  Maxwell talks about the importance of embracing discomfort to reach your potential.  Watch it here.

Let me know what you think.

I burst out laughing when I read this quote, having just come back from a networking event, where just before walking in the door, I got caught in a downpour and my hair was really bad.  Instead of relaxing and enjoying the event, my hand kept creeping up to ‘fix’ my hair ( a truly hopeless cause) and a good part of my brain activity was preoccupied with what people were thinking of the image I was presenting…….  what a waste of energy and thought!

So next time you find yourself on that treadmill of obsessing about what other people think, remember this quote.  No one is paying all that much attention to you – they’re busy listening to that voice in their own head!

I always enjoy the reports these guys put out and this one is exceptional.  Read it here.

Assumptions trip each of us more often than we realize. They can impact what you take on, what you let bother you, how you interact with certain people.  We all think of ourselves as making logical decisions based on fact, but the truth is that most of the time we make decisions based on assumptions and those assumptions are usually not logical.   They’re emotional.  They’re based on past experiences which may not always apply anymore.  They can be based on habit – we’re just used to classifying things a certain way and we no longer realize what a habit it has become.

Shake yourself up a little – see what assumptions you make today and question whether they are truly valid.    Perhaps you need to do a little window-washing?

See it for yourself here. I was surprised by some of this information!