Surviving a meeting today, I recalled the essential skill that makes a great salesperson: the ability to listen, sometimes for extensive periods of time. I’m always amazed when a person selling something can’t be bothered to actually listen to what the buyer has to say (another way one might put this, when the cluetrain made a stop, they failed to board).
It can be difficult, for sure. I remember one meeting, where there was 3 or 4 minutes of silence. Anyone involved in sales and marketing should become familiar with the term markets are conversations. Learn more at the cluetrain.
What Makes a Good Opportunity?
So what makes a good opportunity? A colleague of mine at the University of St. Thomas, Dr. Alec Johnson, has come up with what I think is a simple yet effective framework for analyzing opportunities. It is based on what he terms the “Three M’s”: Me, Market, and Money. All three are related, and if any of them are missing, it’s likely the concept is not worth developing.
Coaching in Wisconsin – Worth it?
 |
Pearly Kiley – wishoops.net [PDF Version 103K] |
“With all this talent, why aren?t we winning more games?”
“My kid averaged 20 points in summer league, why isn?t he playing more?”
“Why are we walking the ball up the floor all the time?”
“I wish we had the old coach back.”
These unfounded sentiments were also a major reason why over 80 coaches
chose to resign, were relieved of duty or retired since last season.
There are coaches who point to AAU basketball and all its dramatically improving impact. Some blame school administrators for showing more allegiance to parents than them in disputes over individual roles and playing time. Still others say it takes too much time ? and impossible patience ? to deal with the increasingly overzealous parent.
?At the high school level, the rewards aren?t tangible,? said former Waupaca coach Tim Locum, who resigned after last season and is currently an assistant coach at UW-Oshkosh.
Speaking of Clean Elections: Washington’s Governors Race
Seattle blogger Stefan Sharkansky on voting irregularities their Governor’s race:
Christine Gregoire has said that our recent election was “a model to the rest of the nation and the world.” If what she meant is that the King County Elections Office is her model of how she plans to run the state of Washington, then we should all be worried.
Is it really “good enough for government work” to count 3,500 or 2,000 more ballots than there were voters? The airlines figured out years ago how to match the number of boarding passes with the number of people sitting in the airplane. Why can’t our elections officials match the number of ballots cast with the number of voters who supposedly cast them?
I think most Washingtonians agree that it isn’t good enough for government work to decide an election by a box load of funny votes. It is not the American way for a tainted victory of 129 votes, marred by thousands of illegitimate votes, including double voters, felon voters, cemetery voters and unidentified voters, to take the place of a legitimate decision of the electorate.
Charter Cable’s CEO resigns
Local Cable Monopoly Charter Communication’s CEO Carl Vogel resigned yesterday amid a decline in subscribers and an accounting probe. Charter’s stock closed yesterday at $1.92/share, a 52 week low.
I think the cable folks have pushed the envelope with respect to pricing and “product”. I can’t imagine much growth is left in that business. The action is certainly shifting to the internet. Former Microsoft exec Paul Allen is Chairman of Charter. Allen went on a cable acquisition spree years ago, which loaded up charter with $19billion in debt (quite a bit, even for a billionaire).
More on Milwaukee’s Unusual Election Numbers
Greg Borowski has a useful followup to recent discussions on Milwaukee’s unusual election numbers today:
At issue is a gap between the city’s estimate of 84,000 election-day registrants and 73,079 verification cards that were sent, as required by law.
Local bloggers and others, including talk radio hosts, have labeled the gap as evidence of more than 10,000 illegally cast ballots.
Stone has stopped short of calling the ballots fraudulent but said “it casts doubt over the 10,000 votes, who cast the 10,000 votes, where those people live and whether they were eligible to vote in the city of Milwaukee.”
More on Madison’s numbers:
In Madison, the city clerk’s office doesn’t keep a tally of same-day registrants whose addresses could not be verified. In the November election, 17,467 people registered at the polls, but city officials have no idea how many of those addresses could be verified, said Sharon Christensen, deputy city clerk.
Why Do Women Live Longer than Men?
That question can be answered at two levels. An evolutionary biologist would tell you that it is because women get evolutionary bonus points from living long enough to help bring up the grandchildren. Men, by contrast, wear themselves out competing for the right to procreate in the first place. That is probably true, but not much help to the medical profession. However, a group of researchers at John Moores University, in Liverpool, England, has just come up with a medically useful answer. It is that while 70-year-old men have the hearts of 70-year-olds, those of their female peers resemble the hearts of 20-year-olds.
Air Travel: Getting worse or?
Tuesday’s launch of the up to 800 seat Airbus A380 is a useful time to consider the state of air travel:
- Milwaukee based Midwest Airlines has substantially reduced it’s award winning business class service. I imagine the wide seats will be gone completely in the near future. Tom Daykin takes a look at Midwest and wonders which direction they will go. I frankly think they should take another look at slightly up market service. The race to the bottom is never a successful strategy.
- The use of regional jets (50 to 100 seats) continues to grow. In effect, we passengers are packed in tighter than sardines on these small jets. Some airlines fly these things on 1000+ mile routes. Not a great way to travel.
- The emerging microjet or air taxi business offers an interesting glimpse into the future. 4 passenger jets….
Paul Yvarra: Candidate for Wisconsin DPI Superintendent
I recently had an opportunity to visit with Dr. Paul Yvarra, candidate for Wisconsin DPI Superintendent. This interview is available in both Quicktime Video and mp3 audio 1 | mp3 audio 2. Check it out. Learn more about all four Wisconsin DPI Superintendent candidates here.
Milwaukee County Voting Strangeness?
Michelle Malkin points out a story that I had missed in neighboring Wisconsin, one that calls into question the veracity of its presidential-election results. Wisconsin wound up going for John Kerry by 11,300 votes in what came as a mild surprise to most observers in the Upper Midwest (via Stranded On Blue Islands). Al Gore had carried the state by a shade over 5,000 votes in 2000, and most pollsters had the race a dead heat or George Bush pulling slightly ahead in 2004. Instead, Kerry took Wisconsin by doubling Gore’s total.
How did that happen? Well, in one county — Milwaukee, a traditional Democratic stronghold — turnout increased by just under 49,000 votes, or about 10%, outstripping the nationwide increase of 6.4%. The new votes broke about 60/40 Kerry, about the trend of the county in both elections, adding a 9,000-vote margin to Milwaukee over Gore in the last election.
But here’s where the Silence Of The Cheese gets … well, stickier. According to state records, 83,000 people executed a same-day registration for Milwuakee County, which is more than 20% of all voting-age residents in the county. Now, Wisconsinites may procrastinate a bit, but in order to believe that number, you’d have to expect that 20% of the county had moved or became newly eligible within the past two years (after the previous national cycle). Not only that, but the state now reports that 10,000 of those registrations cannot be verified, a whopping 12% of all same-day registrations and almost the entire margin of victory for Kerry for the entire state.
There’s more, including some corrections to the data. Via instapundit.