It’s the time of year when everyone’s getting ready for the holidays – cleaning the house, wrapping presents, bringing out the decorations, sending & receiving holiday cards. It’s a time to be with family and good friends reflecting on the past year and thinking about improving ourselves for next year.

And yet many of us also find that this is the most stressful time of year. Yes, retail employees and shipping clerks are swamped. Consumers are rushing to get last minute presents. But I’m thinking of all the business salespeople and their counterparts in purchasing that are just stressed out because their fiscal year end coincides with the end of the calendar year. As a sales person, I thrive on the high-stakes actions of winning and keeping customers. But when those actions often culminate in an end-of-year battle of budgets and competition that conflict with holiday time with family and friends? Not so wonderful. Wouldn’t it be nice to work for a company or sell to a customer who’s fiscal year doesn’t end on 31 December?

I’ve spoken to a few contracts officers this week and we all lament the same thing, that it’s really too bad we’re working on end-of-year deals when we really want to enjoy the holidays with our friends and family instead of being co-workers and vendors.

So in the spirit of balancing work with family in equal measures, we at Inquisix want to wish you all a wonderful and relaxing holiday time with those closest to you.

Bonne fete

Happy Holidays!

I met Seth Godin years ago at one of those kids activity centers where parents host their pre-schooler’s birthday parties. If you have kids, then you know that pre-school birthday parties means “no drop-off” thus you can’t run a few errands or stop by Dunkin Donuts. I was reading his “Permission Based Marketing” book amongst the happy screams of little kids and I notice out of the corner of my eye that 2 people keep walking past me and smiling. One of them finally approaches me and says, “My husband wrote that book!” The other person walking past me turned out to be her husband, Seth. You’d think that I’d recognize him since his handsome dome was right on the front cover of my book!

I was reading this while my kid was here

Seth’s recent post is about how intangibles are what allows you to charge more for your service vs the commodity-oriented competition. Some of his ideas include participation, enthusiasm, speed, focus, generosity and hope.

Hope? No, not “I hope this deal will close” as that’s not an viable or effective tactic for beating the competition. Instead, “is your offering going to be something great.”

As I’m reading this blog, it struck me that I consider all these intangibles to be my reputation. Just like an intangible, it’s hard to quantify reputation. You either have it or you don’t. Your reputation with your customer is what keeps them coming back to you instead of saving money with your competitor. Your reputation is what gets you the warm welcome when you meet with prospects.

Here’s a few suggestions of mine on ensuring you have the intangibles, the reputation, it takes to compete and win.