Avoid Mixed Messages

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In his excellent book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Dr. Stephen Covey cites Habit Number Five as, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Excellent advice. That one point will make everyone’s relationships much more, well…effective. Complementary to that habit, it’s equally important to be sure that, in communicating your point, you…

A Very Profitable Experiment for Ending Gossip

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In their book, The One Minute Millionaire, Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen relate that Marshall Thurber, a partner in a very successful real estate company in San Francisco, CA told of a powerful experiment in his office. In fact, according to Thurber, “It immediately transformed my entire organization.” They took a saying, based on…

Does Positive Expectation Really Work?

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“Expecting someone to be helpful doesn’t change them, it changes you.  And that is what changes them.” –Bob Burg (Did I just quote myself?) 🙂 You’re about to go into a sales presentation with a prospect you’ve heard can be a real bear. Or, you’re about to ask the customer service representative with a sour…

In Order to Persuade, First…

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This morning on Twitter I posted the following: “Trying 2 persuade w/o 1st eliciting like & trust is as futile as…as…darn, hate when I can’t come up w a clever ending. :-)” Almost immediately, I received a bunch of terrific responses that very effectively filled in the blank that I couldn’t. Rather than listing all…

Lessons in Persuasion from Maddy The Dog

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As I’m writing this*, I’m looking at Maddy the dog, the Labrador retriever of Michele, one of my part-time team members. Maddy is sitting just to the left of me, giving me “that look” (i.e., “feed me, Uncle Bob”). Interesting thing about Maddy; she looks at everyone as though they are the most important person…

Who Controls Your Butter?

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Let’s face it; as residents of this earth, no matter who we are, what we do, or who we know, there are times when we have to deal with those difficult people who might — for whatever reason — choose to stand in the way of our pursuit of happiness. It might be something big,…