Training & Personal Development

Put Yourself On The Spot

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It was one of the toughest decisions I ever faced in business. I was running a media business and needed to appoint a strong number 2 – probably the person that would take over from me. And there was no shortage of candidates. Two strong contenders from within, and a clutch of up and comers…

Is It Time To Think About 2012?

2012

In previous posts when I talk about goals, I always maintain that you might want to think about them as not something you do every year, set and forget, but rather chunk them down in blocks. I for one need an almost daily look at my 90’s as I call them,  and my longer term…

The More Things Change…

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While doing a spot of research recently, I came across an old newspaper clipping. Beneath the headline ‘Seeing by telephone’, the story told of a Monsieur Edouard Belin who had announced in a lecture to the French Electricians’ Society he believed he was on the verge of a technological breakthrough. He said by combining the…

Are You Stealing From Your Clients?

stealing

I was meeting up with Graham Barr this morning; he regularly adds his voice to Talking Media Sales from a print perspective. We were talking about how many direct sales people are just order takers and selling only spot and dots and space and page impressions. In his view, it was like stealing from your…

Plan Tomorrow Today

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One of my early mentors and previous partners at NRS Media, Brian Duffy, taught me this valuable tip. Plan Tomorrow Today – I first met Brian when he was a consultant to one of the first media companies I worked for. He would always sit me down on his visits and ask me this simple…

Select the Winners, Get Rid of the Losers

winners

Any good manager will tell you that they surround themselves with people that are better than them. The weak ones do not subscribe to that belief. They just manage, work on the ones that they want to be friends with and ignore the winners by simply leaving them alone. To survive in direct media sales,…