There lives a powerful band of monkeys, and they are out to harm you. When you feed them, they become even stronger, rattling the bars of their cage, causing a distracting clatter. As they become more and more out of control they throw…

Is your company the next Starbucks or trending towards Polaroid-like demise? Answer the following questions to find out:

1. Are the revenues from any one customer more than 10% of your total revenues?
2. Are your gross…

There’s nothing wrong with being nice, and it’s a huge asset in most situations. Building relationships with customers and forging new ones with prospects requires some degree of niceness or the ability to fake nice really well. And I believe that most people aren’t faking.

Being a nice person becomes a liability for leaders when they engage in Employee Neglect, the workplace equivalent of child neglect. Employee Neglect occurs when…

There’s a love affair going on and it’s wrecking relationships. No, I’m not referring to the extracurricular personal activities in workplaces around the globe; I am calling out the leaders and staff who are smitten with supposed best practices that are anything but.

All too often things keep being done the same way because that’s how they’ve always been done. In other cases, people are using a method because they were told this is how most…

Fans were surely pleased, engaged, and even surprised during the Super Bowl. I refer not to the game itself, which was a stunning upset, but the much anticipated commercials. Millions of tweets, texts, emails, and Snapchats provided an ongoing commentary on these carefully crafted sales pitches. All this excitement focused on companies wanting us to part with our money in trade for their products and services. Shows what a compelling approach can do to create a buzz, name recognition, and…

Take No Prisoners is a free weekly memo from Scott Wintrip that explores how Radical Accountability prospers companies and changes lives. Instead of taking people hostage with outdated, heavy-handed, and ineffective methods of management, measurement, and motivation, Radical Accountability focuses on creating an unwavering responsibility for getting what matters most done.

Predatory animals and the best leaders of sales teams have something in common—their sense of “smell” is…

A host of human resource leaders are embroiled in a conspiracy—protecting their companies from the likes of you. Their evil sidekick, procurement, has their back. They make you jump through hoops called the RPF process, leaving you thinking this is your shot, when really it’s a process of exclusion rather than inclusion. They even deploy technological advancements, including VMS, as a shield to protect their companies from too much contact from the perceived toxic interactions with account…

Like color blindness, some people on your team may have developed Leadership Blindness. Here are a few of the symptoms:

• You have to repeat instructions or requests two or more times.
• Directives, especially those in print, appear to go unnoticed.
• The same mistakes happen again, and then yet again.
• Important details are being overlooked, especially when dealing with customers.

Leadership Blindness…

Some interactions with customers almost seem to be divinely inspired, while others feel like you’re trudging though mud and muck, getting nowhere fast. What’s the cause of these very different scenarios?

The Inspired Sale, one in which the buyer feels a compelling need to buy and buy from you, always has two components: trust and compulsion. Without both of these, selling becomes a difficult, if not impossible task.

Without trust and compulsion, you…

When a prospective buyer says “no” it is not always a refusal to do business with you. In many cases N-O really stands for one or more of the following:

• Not the Official: You’re talking to the wrong person, so of course you’re getting a “no.” This is your opportunity to get to the official decision-maker with true buying authority.
• Not Open: Just like a chained and locked storefront closed for business,…

One of my dearest friends shared a conversation she’d had with her daughter, Molly. Molly was attempting to Bellyache, Moan, and Whine about her current circumstances (I often refer to this as recklessly driving a BMW). Being the ever confident and highly competent mom, she did not allow Molly to pull her down into the clutches of a victim spiral. Instead, she…

On this New Year’s Eve, we get to make a choice of what we leave behind and what we take with us into the coming year. We get to choose our actions, goals, aspirations, dreams, and desires. We get to select a belief in all of the possibilities or all of the problems that could occur.

We have control over three things in our lives: our choices, our words, and our actions. Given this limited span of influence, it behooves us to choose wisely.

May your dreams come true…

Take a moment and see things through the eyes of a child, especially during this holiday season. Anticipation and excitement fill her entire being as she thinks about all of the possibilities that the day will hold. Even when family members become impatient with her or one another, she still sees the glass half full, believing that wishes do come true.

Where does this attitude go when you become an adult? It gets buried under responsibilities, distractions, and the stresses of life.…

Hundreds of leaders have recently wasted thousands of hours planning strategies for next year. Yes, many of these plans are brilliant, profound even, but that doesn’t matter. The time invested would have been better spent meeting with customers or even doing some holiday shopping.

The problem is not the strategy. It’s the abandonment of these well intentioned plans that’s about to occur in thousands of companies across the…

Next time someone asks you to repeat a question, count the number of words. Chances are it was more than ten. I’ve often noticed this happening with salespeople talking with prospects and clients and executives speaking with members of their team. What’s the issue? Our brains process questions of less than ten words much more effectively than those that exceed ten.

Each time we pose a question of more than ten words, the listener spends more time focusing on the question and less on…

Talk may be cheap, but salespeople often spare no expense when it comes to spending lots of time saying lots of words. That is why I created the Sales Mantra:

Say little, ask a lot.

I’ve been told by many of the sales leaders and salespeople I’ve had the honor of working with over the years that this one concept alone has impacted both the quantity and quality of their business.

Since words alone are not enough, there is a second part of…

I don’t know about you, but small talk often drives me crazy. It goes something like:

“Hey, how are you?”

“Great, how are you?”

“Fine, you?”

“The same. What’s new?”

“Oh, you know, working hard, not playing enough. You?”

“Things are great. Just got a new Lexus.”

“Really, that’s great.”

“Well, great to see you.”

“Yeah, great to see you and catch up.”

I’ve often said that I’d rather endure a mild form of torture than be…

It’s the height of hockey season and the winning teams and great players all have one thing in common—they skate to where the puck will be versus where it already is at any given moment. The great one, Wayne Gretzky, was known for this trait, with many players that have come after him emulating this best practice.

In hockey you score by advancing the puck into the goal; in recruiting you score by having and advancing the right person into the need of the customer. Therein lies the…

Some salespeople seem to be channeling their inner Darth Vader, attempting to will customers to buy using the Force—Sales Force. Using Jedi mind tricks and their trusty tongue sabers, they attempt to convince, cajole, and manipulate people into saying “yes.” Even the best of salespeople, including those with high integrity and ethics, are still…

Take No Prisoners is a free weekly memo from Scott Wintrip that explores how Radical Accountability prospers companies and changes lives. Instead of taking people hostage with outdated, heavy-handed, and ineffective methods of management, measurement, and motivation, Radical Accountability focuses on creating an unwavering responsibility for getting what matters most done.

Too many leaders spend too much time serving as the longterm memory for their direct reports.…