Tritton USB Speakers— ‘Cause salespeople need to dance.
These Speakers Rock
If you are out on the road and a music lover like I am, you’d probably find that any speakers on any device in a hotel lack the sound quality you want. If you got your laptop along, then you should take a look at the TRITTON: Sound Bite, Portable USB Speakers. The get great sound, have a very small footprint, and plug right into your usb port. As added benefit is that they set up a separate music driver, so if you are using Skype or some other service, you can keep doing it while getting your groove on.
About the size of a hockey puck, the stereo tweeters sit fold up to look like Mikey Mouse with broken ears. I find that I’ve been using these more and more for business too, in conjuction with my Dell Mini and Dell MIni 109 Projector.
TRITTON Sound Bite, Portable USB Digital Speaker System
Do Assholes Stink Up Your Day? Then Read On
I went to the book store to get my latest basketful of business CD’s. Almost as a joke, I picked up Robert Sutton’s book, The No Asshole Rule. I’ve worked with difficult people in the past, and hear stories from friends of mine inside and outside the industry about difficult people, including staff, coworkers, spouses, and others. I thought that this would be fun, and as Fat Albert says, “If I wasn’t careful, I might learn something, too”.
I did have fun, and I did learn something too. Sutton gives an overview of how assholes affect business, from a human relations, legal liability, operational cost, and in terms of loss sales and employee turnover. He does this using examples that are sickening, amazing, and (with the passage of time and no personal involvement) humorous as well.
These examples are also educational. Sutton gives a number of good tactics towards eliminating and disempowering the asshole. Sutton provides a number of good ways for companies and groups to avoid even hiring a difficult person.
Finally, Sutton steps into what is arguably dangerous territory. He talks about the positive side of the asshole, and turning on the inner asshole inside you.
The audio book is not without flaws. I didn’t think that the reader’s vocal temperment and pacing were in line with what Sutton was teaching. It just sounded a little bombastic to me. I felt that Sutton should have addressed more the dilemma of dealing with an asshole you have no power to get rid of, asshole management, I guess.
Finally, it might not be an appropriate book to listen to when traveling with passengers occupying booster seats in your car. So buy it, and put on those headphones.
The 400 Hour Work Week.
Then I lost one. My first loss ever to this competitor in head to head competition. Damn, what a slap in the face, even though they came in $150K less than me.
It was time to change my game. I realized that I was partially distracted by a string of interviews with a Fortune 5 company. I wasn’t crazy about the job, but thought that the management was great, and the company fantastic. But I really think that the company I work at now is in the midst of an exciting and challenging time. That’s more important to me than the money, and I’m happy to say that the money has always come with me.
So, the first thing to change was the mindset. I may have a shitload of people over me, that have more power than me, and more access to resources than me, and it made sense to ask them for help. But that wasn’t enough; I had to respond to my competition in a way that was scalable, focused and fast.
First, I cancelled my interviews with the other company. I needed to focus on this mission and this mission solely.
Then I developed a philosophy. Many of you have read that book, “The Four Hour Work Week”. Sounds great to have your little businesses going “ca ching ca ching” all in chorus while you’re in Fiji contemplating your navel. Yeah, dream on.
What the book did teach was a philosophy. Get rid of worthless stuff. Set up processes, automate, and/or outsource the disagreeable or less profitable tasks to others. Do what makes money, and what I like to do.
So instead of a 4 hour workweek, I’m working a 400 hour work week. I’m leveraging a number of different resources to speed up my impact including:
- PHPList- an open source email tool.
- Jblast- Fax broadcast service.
- Callfire – automated dialing service.
- A Web developer and virtual assistant I picked up from getafreelancer.com
The Internet has made these power tools very inexpensive. PHPList is a free email tool that I use from a $6.95/month web site hosted at siteground.com. The program is literally installed with a mouse click.Jblast charges between 6 and 12 cents per page faxed, and Callfire charges 3.9 cents a minute.
I can play like the big guys, and still get it under the radar on my expense account. Stay tuned. Over the next few days, I’ll give you my experience with each of these products and services.
Bookjive.com- Book Review Wiki
Want to get a quick overview of Made to Stick ? How about The 4 Hour Work Week? Bookjive.com has 100’s of reviews, submitted by readers, like you and me. Not just business, either. Quality runs from fantastic to non-existent, I’d recommend to look for highlighted stories recommended on the front page. Great place for you to do your book reports as well. If you sign up for their newsletter, you’ll get a PDF every month of the latest business books, including author bios.
Wikiversity Section on MBA
Wikiversity has a great outline of the subjects you need expertise in to advance you MBA.
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topic:Master_of_Business_Administration
How to Handle That First Sales Meeting
Eric gives an overview of how to get to that first meeting. From the site:
These notes are intended as a guideline for the first sales meeting with a buyer. It is not expected that all sales meetings will go this way, but we believe that our salespeople will find it useful, in many cases, to use parts or all of these guidelines. They are based on The Everything Selling Book.
How To Speak Lectures Online from Harvard.
A great overview on public speaking from http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58703/winston1.html gives a overview on public speaking. Here’s the summary from the site.
In this skillful lecture, Professor Patrick Winston of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers tips on how to give an effective talk, cleverly illustrating his suggestions by using them himself. He emphasizes how to start a lecture, cycling in on the material, using verbal punctuation to indicate transitions, describing “near misses” that strengthen the intended concept, and asking questions. He also talks about using the blackboard, overhead projections, props, and “how to stop.”
Running time: 45 minutes.
Get an Education Online Free
At http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Online_Education_Free_201_2006.php , Jimmy Ruska gives a great overview of different ways to get a Free Online Education using a combination of Open Courseware, Blogs, and Online Lectures.
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