I coach corporate sales positioning, value propositions, and strategic selling in white collar environments. My client companies typically offer differentiated, value-based solutions in increasingly crowded spaces. In many regards, they parallel … [Read more...]
6 Reasons Why Your First Loss is Usually Your Best Loss
Financial decisions, especially those made during tight economic times, are harder to make than those of previous times of prosperity. Especially dicey are tough calls that demand a difficult decision to hang on or cut the cord. No one makes the … [Read more...]
Never Lose Sight of Your Best Alternative
Choices -- and the decisions we make -- determine which roads we travel. Some of those decisions will be right, some wrong, and a few may require a U-turn and do-over. All of this is fine and normal. Little in life follows a straight, predictable … [Read more...]
The 3-Day Rule: How to Deal with Disappointment
For the past six weeks I have been eyeballs-deep mediating a heck of a mess. The goal -- an executive and company divorce -- has so many interwoven business and emotional complexities that a bearable solution tied to an volatile transition seems like … [Read more...]
“We Got to Play Baseball” Now in eBook Format
978-1-61897-983-4sample As baseball's regular season winds down, "We Got to Play Baseball" (60 Stories from Men Who Played the Game) is now available in eBook format. To download a sample, including chapter one, click the hot link to the left … [Read more...]
Why Worker Worries are Changing
Results of a recent survey by Harris Interactive caught my eye due to its revealing evidence of behavioral change in the American workplace. Elizabeth Olson wrote a beautiful piece about this in Fortune and I thought the subject of her work is timely … [Read more...]
Why Politics Inflame Emotion
As an impatient and confused America lumbers toward an uncertain eenie-meenie in November's presidential election between two flawed candidates, ushering us along the way are flood tides of political truths, half-truths, mistruths, and laughable … [Read more...]
Ocean Palmer’s 20 Keys to Better Writing
About every three weeks I am contacted by an aspiring writer searching for advice in advance of writing a story or book. Since it is easy to write but hard to write well, here are 20 things I suggest they consider: Have a voice. Do not copy someone … [Read more...]
Why the Olympics Survive
As calendar pages peel away to mark the midway point of the 2012 Summer Olympics, London, as we knew it would, has been a splendidly gracious host to all 204 participating countries. Although I'm not sure why Hong Kong, which is part of China, or … [Read more...]
Why Great Leaders Can Weaken
The same skills that propel a woman or man to become a terrific businessperson frequently circle around to bite them on the butt and make them a less than stellar leader. This is a maddening but increasingly common coaching phenomenon: How do you … [Read more...]