What You Can Learn from Madonna, Martha and Oprah You can't surf the TV channels or go through the supermarket checkout aisle without hearing all about Gwyneth's new baby stroller or the dirt on Britney's latest shopping spree. But between tips on how to imitate celebrity looks, are there career lessons to be learned from rich and famous women? Joanne Meehl, ...

It’s a fact: Many employees suffer from a toxic boss. If you’re in sales, a high-maintenance manager can be particularly difficult as you struggle to meet your quota. What’s a sales rep under pressure to do? In this podcast, Jeff Hoffman, CEO of the Massachusetts-based sales training organization Basho Strategies, outlines four steps to help you better manage your toxic sales ...

Like many salespeople and small business owners, I find staying focused during prime selling hours to be difficult. As a sales trainer, coach, and consultant, my days are filled with activities that try to pull me away from selling. Yet, like every other company, selling is the life blood of my business—its what keeps the doors open and the company healthy ...

We've all heard stories about the nightmare of working for a toxic boss. Some of us have even had the unique displeasure of doing so ourselves. Red flags to such behavior often appear as early as the interview process. We've compiled 10 warning signs of a toxic boss. Watch for them in the interview and you might be able to avoid ...

Real estate is a people business. So what happens when a real estate agent moves to a new city as a trailing spouse or because the weather is better? The bad news: You start over again. The good news: It's easier the second time around. Just ask Mark Riley, a high-end property specialist in Cincinnati. Several years ago, he decided to ...

To get ahead, you've got to keep the spotlight on your projects and accomplishments. But how does an effective, ambitious manager walk that fine line between gaining visibility and appearing to be a shameless self-promoter? The key in differentiating between the two is your intention: The best managers focus on departmental accomplishments, not themselves. How managers gain visibility makes all ...

If you've done the same tasks at the same job for a long time, you've probably experienced job burnout. If you're lucky, it occurs infrequently and can be alleviated by a favorite hobby or pastime. However, for many people, career boredom strikes more frequently and lasts longer. What's going on here? Psychologists tell us that the human brain needs constant and ...

Since the 1970's vision statements have adorned the walls of most organisations, being used to communicate the direction in which an organisation is heading. Most are poor vehicles for that communication and serve mainly to confuse or bemuse the employees they are supposed to guide. The majority of vision statements are poor. At best these poor vision statements are not ...

The experts can warn you until they're blue in the face: Beware of office romances. But there that special someone is: So cute, such chemistry, so nice - this could be the love of your life, or at least the romance of your week. You don't want to just say no, but are you at grave risk of one day getting ...

Most of us at some point have woken up in a cold sweat after a horrific nightmare about work. Whether about showing up naked at the office or missing a career-changing deadline, each of these dreams could have a deeper meaning about how you feel about your job. Wonder what your work dreams are telling you about your relationship with ...

There was a time when marketing and advertising were viewed as seat of the pants processes, based on gut feeling, hope, and simply looking at the overall results to determine whether they were ‘working.’ Instead of trying to understand marketing as a quantifiable activity, the marketing department would simply generate a number of targeted activities such as direct mail pieces, radio, ...

No question, channeling the energy of a sales team can be a challenging endeavor. But here's an incontestable fact: How you compensate your reps determines where they invest their time and the results you get. The incongruence of sales compensation is one of the biggest disconnects in companies. Executives sit in a boardroom with strategic plans of grandeur, but the plan ...

Hopefully, you're not still under the illusion that if you're talented and hardworking, somehow people will notice and you'll get your just rewards. A lot of career Cinderellas are still out there waiting around for that prince of a promotion or raise to come, getting more disillusioned and depressed with every passing day. Getting promoted means getting noticed, which is ...

Work isn’t perfect, right? But if you are lucky enough to have a job right now it pays to remember that millions and millions of Americans don’t think you have a thing to complain about. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the nation’s unemployment rate is hovering around 10%. Even more troubling, The New York Times reports that ...

A recent report from sociologists at Harvard, University of Minnesota and University of California, Berkeley showed that diversity training and networking alone are failing to help companies recruit or retain women and other minority groups. What works? Coalitions that actively engage women in the company’s present and future. At your company, you can start a women’s initiative: An organization that asks ...

You've always considered yourself a top-notch professional, but lately, it seems you're losing your touch. You don't feel like you fit in anymore. It's as if you walked into the office one morning and everything was different. These changes are probably much more subtle than you think, but you finally woke up to the fact that something's wrong. Is it ...

In the pulp novels of 1950’s science fiction writers, the future was a nightmarish place where machines turned on their makers, and robots took over from – or did entirely away with – their human counterparts. For countless sales professionals across the country, that future is now upon us. Only instead of robots, it’s Web sites, self-service kiosks, direct mail and ...

What's the difference between the rising star whose career is picking up speed and his counterpart who can't seem to get the engine to turn over? Often, the star has mastered the nuances of business etiquette - the subtle but critical behaviors that can make or break an important meeting, influence a first impression or impress a potential client. According to ...

If you ask human resources people how to get out of a rut, they may dutifully present you with a career ladder that demonstrates how - at least in theory and in due time - you'll be able to climb to the next rung in your company's petrified organizational structure. If you ask your friends, they're likely to tell you to ...

Bringing the next generation on board is a common aspiration for those who run family businesses. There's a reason, after all, that expressions such as "Someday, this will all be yours" have become cliches. But often there's an equally powerful thought running through the minds of would-be heirs. "They ask, 'If I join, will I need to be like Mom and ...