Today, September 6, is my anniversary of getting kicked out of engineering and tossed into sales. I don’t think it would have ever happened if it had been up to just me.
The first guy I interviewed with told me about…
Viacom ads & the Content vs. Pitch death spiral
This morning at breakfast, my buddy John Fox who writes a marketing blog on the Huffington Post handed me an interesting article. The Wall Street Journal explains how Viacom has been piling more ads onto its TV channels like Nickelodeon.
They’re doing this because…
Dishonest [art] [storytelling] [salesmanship]
There’s a cable TV show called “Storage Wars.” It’s about self-storage units where the owner didn’t pay his bill. The manager saws the padlock off the door and buyers bid on the contents without being able to rummage through the pile.
Once the bidder pays for the contents, he gets to sift through and see what he actually got.
One guy tore brown paper off a stack of pictures and moaned, “Awww, this is hospital art!”
The man who loved to help too much
He brought his sales manager with him, and we started peeling the layers of the onion.
I quickly discovered his #1 problem is:
He LOVES to help people. LOVES to solve clients’ problems. Loves to apply his knowledge, experience, and insight.
He hates to say no.
So much that he over-delivers and under-charges. Chronically.
A shout-out to the 30-something street fightin' man.
There’s a phase of life I call the Compression Zone. It looks something like this:
Kid #3 just arrived. Kid #2 is still in diapers and kid #1 is barely out of diapers. The day starts when one of ’em starts screaming at 3:45am and the sweet honey-dew of sleep is OVER.
Momma either stays at home, which means money is impossibly scarce, or momma goes to work and puts the kids in daycare, which means money is… impossibly scarce.
Everybody’s emotional tank is on “E” for Empty. Emotional support? What emotional support.
Shame, Curiosity, "RH" and the Best Estudiante Ever
I was in a meeting somewhere, a mastermind group. With a bunch of different guys who teach and coach. Someone mentioned a guy named Kevin. Said something like “He does everything I tell him to do.”
“You mean Kevin Thompson? Hey, I know him. He does everything I tell him to do too.”
Someone else said, “Me too.”
To Death’s Door and Back Again, in Auto Manufacturing
A guy named John from Manitoba met me at a Ken McCarthy seminar in ’09, came to a 4-Man Intensive and joined Roundtable.
His company made aftermarket parts for trucks. He also supplied parts to specialty manufacturers who put them in their vehicles.
In the wake of the ’08 market crash, his customers’ businesses were melting down. John’s orders were falling precipitously.
He hooked up with me essentially out of desperation…
Breakfast Club at the Factory of Dysfunctions
One summer, the company lost a major project from Ford, immediately slashing revenue by tens of millions of dollars. I got spit out in the first inevitable layoff.
Then months later, another layoff… a plant closes, then another… the rounds of layoffs were like cutting your leg off an inch at a time.
Three years later, the whole thing collapsed and the Original Equipment division shut down.
Now here’s what’s interesting, the thing I wanna zero in on today:
Go-To Guy gets shafted
There’s a certain kind of person I call a “Go-To Guy.” If the prototype HAS to be delivered to the trade show, without fail, you send your Go-To Guy straight to the lab. He picks it up and gets on a plane and hand carries it there.
If he misses his plane, he…
Ghetto transportation, Ivy League education
When I worked at my Dilbert Cube job, cutting my teeth as a newbie marketer, my wife’s friend Angela said, “Hey, Laura, wanna meet me at Starbucks?”
Laura said, “Ummm, Angela, I have, like, NO money. What. So. Ever.”