If you're hiring a salesperson, there's one thing you should be looking for: sales aptitude, which is clearly not something everyone possesses. That's according to John Asher, author of the recently released "Close Deals Faster: The 15 Shortcuts of the Asher Sales Method" and CEO of Asher Strategies, a high-level growth strategy consulting firm focused on improving sales for business-to-business companies. To determine sales aptitude...

When a barrage of hurricanes made landfall in Fall 2017, we all learned--and relearned--lessons on how to be empathetic to those in need. While the federal government and FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) have become better responders to victims of natural disaster, many leaders still need more practice with learning to communicate empathetically to clients and partners (Hint: disaster is not a marketing opportunity, no matter how great your hurricane proof vest is.) Our company, like many others...

Prominent billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was arrested Saturday night in an anti-corruption probe, Saudi Arabia announced. At least 24 others, including princes, ministers, and former ministers, were also arrested. Alwaleed, the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company, is one of the world's richest men with a $16.8 billion fortune, Forbes estimates. As of last year,...

For many freelancers and owners of small businesses, signing up clients and completing projects is just one part of the work. Trying to get paid can be almost as time-consuming. Sandy Sloane needed 11 months of persistence before one client paid in full for her publicity and event-planning work. The client was having cash flow problems, but...

When I was at Apple, I met with all kinds of people: General Managers of hockey teams, CEOs of big companies, billionaires. No meeting scared me. That is, until I got here to Scrollmotion--and had to face my first board meeting. That gave me night terrors I will never forget. If you've followed this column,...

In late 1864 Union General William T. Sherman marched into Atlanta, crippling the southern war economy. The practical effect was massive but so was the psychological impact, and not just on southerners: Abraham Lincoln would ride the resulting wave of public confidence into his second term as President. As Ron Chernow describes in...

The issue of respect in sales goes far beyond the experience of just the 14.5 million people who work as sales-related professionals. It affects the success or failure of startups, the economy at large, and even the ability to solve some of the world's most pressing problems. To understand why,...

Can one sentence really create an avalanche of new business? Yes. I have always loved marketing, and over the years I have experimented with just about every marketing method out there. It all started with...

In the early stages of the building of Amazon, Jeff Bezos used to interview every job candidate himself. Bezos believed each employee played a key role, so the quality of new hires was as crucial to the success of the business as the products it sold. As a result, Bezos was not only obsessed with creating an outstanding customer experience. He was also tenacious about hiring the strongest employees possible...

Google's parent Alphabet Inc. said Friday that its stratospheric balloons are now delivering the internet to remote areas of Puerto Rico where cellphone towers were knocked out by Hurricane Maria. Two of the search giant's "Project Loon" balloons are already over the country enabling texts, emails and basic web access to AT&T customers with handsets that use its 4G LTE network. The balloons...

Kirk W. McLaren is an Entrepreneur's Organization (EO) member in Washington, D.C. and CEO of Foresight CFO, a strategic financial management and accounting services firm that performs hands-on responsibilities to help businesses achieve optimal growth. We asked Kirk to discuss the difference between cash flow and profit and how both impact business success. Here's what he shared...

If you were a local leader with your eye on the future, what would you do to attract 50,000 jobs and $5 billion in investment to your city? If the frenzied bidding war kicked off by Amazon's announcement that it's looking for a location for a second headquarters is anything to go by, the answer is nearly anything. Final bids are due into Amazon on Thursday, but...

In April 2015 I announced that every employee at my credit card processing company, Gravity Payments, would be paid a minimum $70,000 annual salary. The policy quickly made headlines, and,...

If you work in software-as-a-service (SaaS) you know the number one metric is annual recurring revenue (ARR). Entrepreneurs, C-level executives, and stakeholders understand how recurring revenue helps to increase business value. But...

Lets be honest, a lot of people getting involved in blockchain are trying for the quick "profits" that people have been making over the last 8-10 months with cryptocurrencies and ICOs. But if you aren't clued in on the tech then you are missing something big. It's much bigger than the money. And even if...

Leadership can mean many different things to different people. And throughout our lifetimes, we'll have many different people whom we'll deem leaders in our own eyes. In the workplace, naturally the executive team, managers and founders step into that role, however, it's not authority that defines a good, effective leader. In fact,...

Recently, I got the following message via email: "I'm a manager at a mid-sized company. My boss has forbidden employees from having a searchable resume on any of the job boards. I have made the difficult decision that it is time to move on. Most every job that I have had was a result of a recruiter finding my resume on a job board. My questions are:...