Author: Jim Nash

I’ve been watching the original Star Trek reruns on Netflix lately. I have always loved that particular series for several reasons. I love the idea

I’ve been in sales for about 20 years now and like anyone in sales or leadership in a company, I’ve been told that the client/vendor relationship “is over”. With that message, I have been given a myriad of reasons or excuses as to why the relationship was over with my company and my soon to be an ex-client ranging from understandable to totally unique, here are some of the better ones.

After a very long meeting the other day, my stomach was beginning to digest itself so I decided to stop for something to eat. I could only find a sandwich shop so in a move much like going to the grocery store hungry, I said, “That looks great!” and went in.

As 2012 comes to a close I have been looking back at the year’s events and reflecting on things that I have done. From a new experience standpoint, it was chocked full of interesting things, but I want to highlight one here and help you the reader draw some corollaries, to business.

I lost a friend to sudden death in the last number of weeks and it has caused me to be introspective about life, work, the future, and why we seem to do the things we do to make a living. Years ago, I made a decision that I want to share with you it’s this; that if you hate what you are doing, or have a dream that you want to pursue but are afraid to do it, stop now and chase that dream because you are not getting any younger.

Recently, I joined the ranks of the iPad owners and have been discovering the myriad of apps available to me to use/goof off with/waste time with. What I have found has been pleasing for the most part, and while I am not likely to become a Ninja Fruits aficionado, or break onto the Angry Birds Pro Tour one of my favorite apps is Pandora Radio. I love music and have it on almost constantly.

America is a nation of Do it Yourselfers like no other that I can think of. All you need to prove that is to watch a few hours of television and you will see commercials for stores like Home Depot, Lowes, and Ace Hardware, who can outfit the household handy person with the right tools, knowledge, and bravery to tackle almost any project.

I have lived in a city of 11,000 people in Minnesota for the last 10 years and always felt that I knew how it looked quite well. In my campaign for both City Council and Mayor I have walked every street and Cul-de-sac in our city, I know the names of each street and can tell you where I am exactly by just looking around. But even with my high level of intimacy of my city, I found out recently that I was missing out on another view of where I live.

Have you ever noticed how important numbers are to us as a people? We are fixated with the numeric results of almost everything; football scores, G.P.A.’s, miles per gallon, cost per unit, throughput, capacity, and the number of minutes it takes the delivery guy to get my pizza to my door.

I was talking to a prospect the other day and they told me that they were debating the value of marketing, channel education, and trying to create market awareness because they were not convinced that it was worth it. They have worked with several analysts, PR agencies, and marketing firms they said, but have not seen the results quickly enough to convince them that it was money well spent, and that they would rely on their sales team to do the educating.