SkillInside

I’ve been using the sales funnel for 28 years, my whole career. This year, I retired the funnel — threw it a party, gave it a gold watch, and congratulated it on its move to a condo in Florida. It was the right thing to do. For one thing, in an era when trust in traditional sources has eroded — in government, media, and in companies and the marketing they employ — word-of-mouth from trusted peers wields greater clout than ever. For another, the funnel fails to capture momentum. A boss of mine used to say, “The sun rises and sets on the quarter.” By the end of a quarter, she had wrung every ounce of energy out of marketing, and we started the next quarter from a standstill with no momentum and no leverage. That’s no longer true. After years of inbound marketing, your company has assets: evergreen content; backlinks to your site; social media followings; and, of course, customers who advocate for your brand. For many of us, our marketing departments could take a vac...

The role of management has changed quite a bit over the past few years. Few people realize it, but the role of management was originally created to maintain the status quo and enforce rules and protocols. Managers were supposed to push employees and extract everything they could from them. Management never cared about engagement, empowerment, or anything related to employee experience. Health and wellness? Dogs in the office? Flexible work? Give me a break! These are all relatively novel concepts. Thankfully we live in a new world and the workplace has dramatically changed. The role of the manager is not what it used to be. I'm fortunate to be able to speak with hundreds of truly great managers every year and I've noticed some common trends emerge. So how can you tell if you are working for this new breed of truly great manager? Well, a truly great managers does five things: Acts Like A Coach Coaches and mentors are powerful instruments of change. Coaches help us...