Columnists

RSS

I’ve always been a numbers kind of guy! I liked math when I was in school and learned very early on how powerful numbers can be in helping run a business. The more ways you can analyze your business, the more successful your business will be. STOP! Don’t move onto the next article just because numbers aren’t your thing. At least give me an opportunity to explain why I strongly believe you should incorporate numbers into the management of your showroom.

In school, we were taught how to organize our belongings and create different ways to keep everything neat and clean. Despite this exhaustive teaching in our elementary schools, more of us forget about that either in our business or personal lives. If you look at my desk in the middle of the week you’d think a hurricane roared through. I’ve always believed there is a method to my madness, but there isn’t anything like the feeling of a freshly cleaned desk.

This column often delves deep into all aspects of the United States’ energy revolution as it carves a path to practical independence in the next decade. But we seem to have been relatively isolated by other analysts who ignore the massive upward climb in refined derivative exports, which surged past 3 million barrels a day in 2013. That output is expected to reach an incredible 5 million barrels a day by the end of the decade.

The fact that these companies invested millions in their e-commerce efforts and had no clear answer was more than disappointing.

It is a fundamental aspect of a company’s safety program that there is a published methodology for employees to report work-related injuries and illnesses. All injuries/illnesses, no matter how slight, need to be reported in accordance with company policy.

Service agreements and tune-ups or “preventive maintenance,” as is required by most A/C equipment manufacturers to fulfill warranty obligations, too often is poorly done by servicing dealers. Frequently, more harm is done than good.

Over the years I have developed a sales effectiveness program called Tier Level Selling.

Back in my middle- and high-school days I was caught more than once substituting the sports page of the Chicago Tribune for a textbook. Three decades later I’ve fully embraced Twitter as a one-stop-shop for learning new things.

So I walk into this loft apartment on Fifth Ave. in lower Manhattan and the first thing I see are three enormous video monitors spread across a semicircular desk. They’re attached to a film-editing system that would make Francis Ford Coppola smile, but instead the owner of that system smiles and says hello.

I’m writing this letter as I reflect upon NetworkASA 2013 in Washington, D.C., in October. I can tell those who didn’t make it there that they missed a memorable time.