2024 rolled up on us fast, and before I knew it an entire quarter had passed without us posting a new Drift. Like a pebble in my shoe, the choice of what to write about and how to break the drought was always present.
And then yesterday at 3:26 pm, on the shore of Lake Champlain staring at the dark side of the moon during totality, I found something truly worthy to share. What kept repeating in my head was. Tell them to start looking at it from the other side.
Our celestial moment has, of course, passed for now. No second bite at that apple for another 20-plus years. But we can all immediately start looking at our jobs, our goals, our relationships, the things we build and do from the other side of our careers.
Now in my mid-60s with 30 years in digital and 40 years in media and advertising, I see things through a different lens; a view that I wished I’d been able to access in my 20s, 30s and early 40s. On that side of one’s career it tends to be all about the striving, about what may be, what may come from it all. On this side, there’s a certain clarity about what has ultimately mattered, what and who have withstood the tests of time and circumstance.
To those on the other side of the career spectrum – and even for some closer to my own arc – here’s what it looks like from this side.
With every conversation and interaction with your peers, you are building your legacy – one way or another. Considering how you want to be truly remembered and valued years from now is a great way to make your choices today.
Own your intent and assume good intentions from others. Doing something just to win the point or to make someone else feel less than will never lead you to the best moves. Have an honest conversation with your inner voice.
Love the excellence over the victory. A successful sale, a monster quarter, even a killer IPO represent a handful of fleeting moments over a career. As victories go, they are transient and short-lived at best, pyrrhic at their worst. Excellence happens every day and the pride you take in your work – and the work of others – nourishes and sustains.
Your career is a network. Tend to its connections with care and generosity. While we must drive outcomes, we do not have to be transactional. Show up when you’re not expected. Put good stuff out onto your network not because of what will come back, but because it will make your whole ecosystem healthier.
Make the Choice. Be the change. Choose to be the teammate, the friend, the colleague, the mentor that you would like to have more of in your own future.
As sellers and executives, we’re both sporadically connected to our colleagues and yet consistently alone in our work, accompanied by only our numbers, hopes and doubts. At Upstream Group, we are asking – humbly and curiously – what our role should be in this Season of Both. Why do our customers and community truly need us now? We are finding answers and developing strategies based on a handful of questions… questions I’d like to share with you today.
We spend an overwhelming share of our time building stories and presentations and proposals – our sandcastles – and almost no time on the closing and qualification strategies that would help them withstand the rising tide of the customer’s conflicting agendas and the waves of our competitors’ subsequent proposals and ideas.
We all get to decide how we show up. Leaning into these decisions won’t necessarily change the numbers or the circumstances, but they will change the narrative from one of anxiety and randomness to a story of perseverance, growth and personal victory. They may not change your Q3 number, but they will change YOU.
The world of work we shut down in March 2020 is gone. Thinking we can just go back to it by getting on the train and turning on the lights is unrealistic to the point of delusion. Attracting, hiring and retaining valuable employees has never been trickier. What you could solve in 2012 with more money and a bigger title requires much more thoughtful answers today. Your competitive future depends on them.
You are shooting yourself in the foot and it’s clouding your vision, mucking up your forecasts and making your sales cycle longer and more unstable. And it doesn’t have to be that way. Here are three self-inflicted wounds that can be fatal to your win-rate, but that are also easily corrected.
This afternoon in San Francisco a man named John Durham died after many years of serious health problems. Those are the facts, but not the story. To those of us who knew and loved him so much, he was THE DURHAM: a life force, a gentle soul, a fantastic dresser and a terrible speller. In short, he was THE DURHAM. To his friends, no explanation is necessary. To those who were never touched by him, no explanation is possible.
I wrote this post about the value of attention a few years ago, pre-pandemic and pre-Zoom. Lightly-edited, it seems even more relevant now. Making others feel fully-attended earns us their attention in return. Read on.
Last week I used this space to share several of the leading themes from Write this Down: Memes and Metaphors for a Better Life in Sales, a book that I've begun working on. This week, a few more, including some challenging advice for both managers, individual contributors and their fellow humans from many walks of life.
I've been outlining a book that will be called Write this Down: Memes and Metaphors for a Better Life in Sales. Since fleshing out the book will take a while longer, I've decided to share many of the aforementioned Memes and Metaphors across the next few posts of The Drift. Read on, comment, share, push back and apply them to your own life in sales.
Five years ago, P&G CMO Marc Pritchard called bullshit on the digital supply chain and challenged us to get our house in order. I’ll make it even simpler. Tell the truth. Sell real stuff. Clean up after yourself. Leave the place a little better than how you found it. Create confidence. Now Google and Apple have done us all a favor. They not only locked the door to the digital funhouse; they pretty much burned the place down. What we build now is up to us. I hope we build back better.
While erstwhile sellers may never actually come out and say "Please don't buy anything from me today," these anti-selling clichés may be the next best -- or worst -- thing.
For teams conditioned to their managers spitting out answers and directives, this approach is going to feel strange at first. The VIP manager is forcing strategic thinking and deeper context into decision making that’s too often situational, transactional and unscalable. VIP management will slow down the moments while simultaneously speeding up the growth of your team.