It's a new year and time for new year's resolutions. A few years ago I started calling  them "goals" because a goal has, hopefully, a finite deadline. Resolutions often don't. As I sat here pondering what were my 2019 personal goals, I also starting putting together my business goals. And I came up with a fun way to match up common terms we use when creating personal goals and relating them to business. Here's what I came up with. 1. Managing weight. Just like we personally want to

This month we're doing another of our Reese's Southern Wisdom blog posts. The timing is actually perfect.  August is a favorite month for travel, family vacations and just getting out of town. For people, that's a good thing. For sales, not so much. With customers not picking up the phone to call for sales or services, a business needs to find a way to bring in revenues during a slow period. Many people are quick to send out email blasts, trusting their computers to do the work of

While working with a client recently I described the basic underlying strategy for a CRM (customer relationship management) process.  He had chatted with several different companies and he remarked that he got paragraph after paragraph of descriptions. However, he said mine was the simplest and one that he felt he could repeat to his sales staff. These were powerful words to me and reinforced what I have felt is a really simple message. Set up a process, implement it, do it every day,

Recently I posted a Youtube video about the integration of Act! and Quotewerks. I'm including a link to it below. After I sent out a Tweet about the video I got back quite a few interesting comments but one in particular inspired this blog post. This follower liked the video and said that the Act! and Quotewerks integration was a perfect Q2C or Quote to Cash software application. To be honest, I had never heard of that acronym so I went and, of course, Googled it. Don't you think Google needs

Today’s blog post is the first “official” entry for my Reese’s Southern Wisdom series.  During my conversations with Reese he kept referring to maximizing his strengths and “strategizing” his weaknesses.  This phrasing is a bit different than you will typically see when you research this concept. And that is on purpose for Reese. It's classic "Reese Speak." Reese spent many years studying sales and personal improvement techniques. He is particularly fond of Stephen Covey

  Several years ago I had the pleasure of meeting a new client who has also become a friend. His name is Reese Griffin. He is now retired, and was lastly a SVP at Boston Mutual Life. He's a born and bred southerner from Tennessee. Reese came to us looking for Act consulting. He is a devotee of the product and has been for years. It runs his world and he's almost lost without it. I was impressed with how well he used it and how he made it a vital part of his every day actions. Often,

During a meeting last week we were discussing a book to review during a quarterly education event coming up. Cleaning out my desk drawers the week before, I stumbled upon a miniature edition of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  I suggested we use that as our book review. It's timeless and still very relevant. That idea made me go look for the full size version and I re-read it over the weekend. Well, mostly I sped-read it. The reading event triggered my blog post today. Every

I've been working with a client recently and we're getting ready to upgrade their Act! As part of the project, I asked my client what was their defined sales process.  And I got the answer I was actually expecting. There was none. Most of the sales reps had been selling this product line for years. They knew what to do. It just came naturally to them.  So I asked him were they planning on bringing anyone on board who was not familiar with the products or how they all sell.  He