Take Advantage of the Opportunity of Lifetime

Take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime, during the lifetime of the opportunity! I use this phase in my keynote program on Gourmet Living; I have coined it as a Thoreson Theorem.  In each of our lives we all have special times or events that open the door to unique opportunities. They maybe a business that is taking off and bringing great rewards, or it could be a special time to share with old friends or relatives.    The important…

Gourmet Living:  Your Life's Pizza

Ahh summer is here, the fourth of July was celebrated with parades, fireworks and many family and community get togethers.  I hope your weekend was a terrific time to celebrate America.

On Saturday,  we spent the evening on the dock, cooling off with frequent swims and feeling the light breeze off the lake;   about 6pm I went up to the kitchen and took out my pizza stone and made a pizza, with pepperoni, mushrooms, 2 kinds of cheeses, fresh basil and Italian…

Guidelines for Effective Management Performance

Share this with your management team

 As I was refilling my book shelves (see previous blog) I found the following bullets from Dale Carnegie & Associates, the copyright was 1967 and updated 1981.  All the information is highly pertinent for today's biggest sales management challenges; my white paper on The Job of Sales Management that is located on my website is somewhat similar but specific to the job functions of the sales manager.  The…

Sales Leadership Thoughts:  Why Winners Win!

 Last week after a speaking at a conference a person mentioned to me she really enjoyed the topic; Why Winners Win.   It is one of my favorite parts of the keynote and the four points I make wrap up many of the beliefs I hold, so I thought I would share them with you today.

The first element is: Winners Create Optimism.   One reason is they dare to dream what others can't imagine.  In the past sociologists told us that you needed talent or hunger…

Creating a Vision for Your Life or How to Develop: Gourmet Living

 After speaking at a sales conference this past week where my title was:  Gourmet Living, Creating a Menu for Life an attendee asked me a great question.  She said: "you spoke about creating a vision for your life and a passion for impacting the lives of others, I don't have a vision for what my life should be like, how do I develop one?"

While somewhat surprised;  I realized many individuals have either lead a life that was…

NCAA Sales Management: Developing Winning Sales Strategy

 Last week it was about golf and putting, this week after indulging in men's and woman's NCAA games all weekend it's all about strategy.

In my view there are several levels of strategy to consider. First, putting the right players on the floor to match up against the competition is key, and is the reason my first book was written: Hiring High Performance Sales Teams. Without talent, you have not chance to win. The good basketball teams…

The Difference Between Average and Top Performers

 In preparation to speak at a sales award banquet this week I was thinking about what kind of message I wanted to leave with the audience and in thinking though  a  variety of ideas I realized it maybe a common  concept that ALL sales leaders must reinforce to their teams. Whether it is a January Kick Off event, a Monday morning sales meeting or a quarterly salesperson review session, sales managers must sell the need to "Plan for Success".

Pla…