In the past few weeks I have used strong negative language: Cowardice...Fight... Neglect Please understand: this is not an emotional reaction on my part. Instead, it is an intentional effort to call you out. And it is this "intentionality" that I encourage you to undertake as well. It is time we, as a profession, [...]
Game-changers are those events that intervene in our lives, on athletic fields, and in our businesses that forever change everything. In our personal lives we identify marriages, deaths, and moving to a new city as the easiest examples of game-changers. In baseball, a homerun changes everything. In business, innovation is the most thought-of [...]
Is it possible that in some markets people no longer care? In this series on Funeral Apologetics I have pointed out that our real problem is cowardice and have endeavored to share some techniques that might help the profession fight for itself. Several very thoughtful individuals (whom I also admire) have suggested that, in their [...]
Apologists must be aware of 4 generally accepted fallacies: Consumers think in a well-reasoned rational way In fact, emotions are closely interwoven with the reasoning process. Most often they are dominant. Consumers can readily explain their behavior and thinking 95% of our thinking is unconscious. Our rational mind serves mainly to make sense of behavior [...]
"The Dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise to the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and we shall save our country." [...]
How interesting! As I step out to encourage this profession to not give in but take a stand and fight for itself I find more than I expected joining the cause. Apropos of everything my friend, Bruce Buchanan, brought an article to my attention published via The Wall Street Journal that succinctly expresses many of [...]
...The problem is cowardice!! There, it's been said. Plain and simple: We have been unwilling to stand up for what we believe and now we are not sure we believe it any more. After all how long can you get beat up and still try to stand? So, instead of taking a stand we assume [...]
I serve on the Board of Directors of a community bank based in Orlando, Florida. In that capacity I receive frequent educational correspondence and one I received this week highlighted the striking similarities between what we do and banking. The author says: "Bankers often forget that they are in a retail business where [...]
When asked what it was that made him so exceptional a hockey player, Wayne Gretzky is said to have responded, "I see my job a little different from most other hockey players.” Pressed for details, he said, "my job is to skate to where the puck is going to be.” The question that all of [...]
Last week in part 2 of this series we learned that "Challengers" don't educate, they teach. They are not afraid of pushing their customers to think in new ways. We also learned that while people may like those who are nice to them, they like those who help them gain new insights even more. But [...]
This category contains articles about how to get and keep customers