Who says long term strategic planning is dead? In many of the business acumen learning workshops that I conduct, participants push back on the concept of long term strategic planning. They feel that in these days of Wall Street-driven results that the concept of long-term planning is dead; replaced by the emphasis on quarterly results and short term payouts of dividends.

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5 Strategies to Make Sure That Your Customer Relationships are Strong Enough to Show on LinkedIn

I just finished facilitating an interesting conversation with a group of sales professionals participating in a customized Strategic Business Selling learning journey. One of the topics of this training is leveraging social selling to enhance the selling process and to enhance the customer relationship and experience.

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Five Upcoming Business Milestones to Watch - Part II

Earlier this week in part one of this blog, we urged our participants and readers to continue developing business acumen skills by applying new skills and keeping up-to-date on global business and economic challenges and opportunities that we all face.

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This is the time of the business year when many professionals are busier than ever because they feel trapped between finishing the execution of last year’s strategic plan and starting the process of developing next year’s plan. Yesterday afternoon, I was conducting an information gathering interview as part of the design for an upcoming business simulation workshop when I asked our subject matter expert – the President of a Business unit – how things are going.

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Whether we admit it to others or ourselves, somewhere deep down we know the scary truth. We know that the last thing we do at night is check our smartphones and the first thing we do in the morning is check our smartphones again. Sometimes, if you wake up in the middle of the night, it’s right there next to our bed, waiting to be checked! We are in constant search of the latest emails that have piled up overnight, the news stories about our customers, or perhaps if we are really lucky, an overnight Facebook rant from a friend who may have had one or two extra adult beverages. There is incredible power in interconnectivity, yet being “on” 24/7 is also a tremendous burden. And no matter what, we can never catch up.

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