Sales Tip Of the Day

Don't Sell Past the Close - In other words, after convincing your customer don't keep pitching the product. If you do you will seem uncertain, making the customer think maybe he missed something.

Only 365 Days...

...until I turn 40.

Great New Series: Mad Men

I stumbled across the new AMC series Mad Men last night and was really taken in. Set in a 1960 advertising agency, the series follows the office politics and love life of a small set of ad executives and their secretaries.

The settings are great, really bringing to life the offices, bars and attire of 1960. It is interesting watching how it portrays business back then, when men were men and women were, at best, secretaries looking for husbands. The funny parts are seeing what was acceptable in an Manhattan ad agency back then - everything from chain smoking to pouring yourself a drink at 11am out of your office bar.

The first episode is running a few more times this week and I recommend catching it to see how you like it.

"Precision" Questioning and Answering

One of my "areas of development" this year is to develop a more concise businesss communication style. There have been complaints that when someone asks me the time I tell them how to make a watch.

So I was interested when someone in the company forwarded me some material on "Precision Questioning and Answering", which the consulting company of course abbreviated to PQ and PA.

Looking through the material (some of it free on their website), a lot of it seems common sense, but does address two issues why concise communication is needed:

1. Executives are overloaded with information and don't want the thorny details, just the high-level information they need. They hired you, after all, to take care of the fine print.
   
   
2. There simply isn't time to go into the details of every project. "Drilling down" would make meetings take hours and emails last pages. This points are driven home when you start moving out of operational and departmental meetings and start participating in executive and board meetings. The information traded is brief, concise and rapid. There is no "drill down", and you would be amazed on how (seemingly) little information is used to make decisions.

There is nothing earth shattering in the material, but it's nice for a refresher on how to better communicate to senior management.

With All My Travel It Was Bound To Happen

There are three stages of advanced sickness:

1. You think you are going to die
2. You hope you are going to die
3. You worry you are not going to die

Fortunately I never even reached stage 1, but I was pretty sick this weekend with all the classical flu symptoms. I broke out my stockpile of Tamiflu and after 48 hours have gotten rid of the major symptoms, but am still pretty fatigued. With an incubation period of 1-3 days, it means I picked this up in Taiwan or more likely on the plane ride back.

The common refrain from friends and family was that it is surprising it took so long for me to finally catch something during all my travels.

Sleeping on an Idea is Sometimes a Bad Idea

When a Brave wanted to have a vision he would go up into the hills and deprive himself of sleep. Putting rocks between his toes and using other methods to induce pain, he would keep himself up for days until the gods would talk to him, showing him images of the future, the paths he should take, and enlightenment.

This modern day warrior experiences sleep-deprived hallucinations on a monthly basis thanks to jetlag and the general inability to sleep on planes. I stay up for 30 or more hours regularly. It is an interesting experience, for at first there is a period of intense sleepiness and fatigue, making the ability to think straight nearly impossible. Then on the other side of that thoughts start arranging themselves again, but in a pattern I am unable to control. Creativity flows on its own as ideas pour forth from my mind. Blog entries, novel outlines, symphony compositions all rush forth at a speed I am unable to write down. I tell myself I will remember them all and write them down later, but I never do.

When sleep finally overtakes me, the ideas leave, the muse goes away, and all I am left with the vague idea that I had some pretty good ideas that I can’t quite remember.

Good Powerpoint Tips in Comedy Format

This is a pretty good stand-up routine that actually has some good advice on Powerpoint.

I Almost Spit My Coffee Onto My Computer Screen

Here is an "ad" for Cialis starring Cuba Gooding Junior. It's a good thing I am working out of the house since this is not work-safe, but really funny.

iPhone Review From a Non-Owner

I wandered down to the Mac store on July 4 and played with the iPhone for 15-20 minutes. From my brief fling, here is my overview:

The Good - This is just one awesome portable web browser. Seeing the whole page then zooming in and out with the "pinching" motion is just genius on a portable device like this. Of course the iTunes music and movie modes are also good, and you would expect that.

The Bad - The touch screen keypad is just horrible. Even with its "predictive" software, most of what I typed ended up as garbage. Typing emails was a major effort, and was about the same speed as someone just learning to hunt and peck. Typing in web pages longer then three letters was a major effort; typing in "www.windowmanger.blogspot.com" took forever, even with the ".com" key they thoughtfully provide. They say that this gets better "after a few days", but I seriously doubt it in my case.


My overall recommendation is that if your primary use of a smart phone is web browsing, then run out and buy this thing (if you have a spare $500 lying around). If your primary use is email - and you are used to a Crackberry or Blackjack - then avoid.

The ultimate phone will be when either Apple or an enterprising rip-off marries the touch screen web functionality to a real keyboard.