Sublime

There is a common misconception that marketing and selling are specialized skills possessed by a limited number of professionals (“natural rainmakers”). This view ignores the fact that, to develop its practice, a firm needs to invest in a wide range of activities, each of which requires a different set of skills and behaviors. For example, most fir

key driver will be customer relevance, rather than a focus on what a company knows how to do. If a skill is relevant to the customer and is not currently offered, the company must develop it, or hire it, or acquire it, or license it, or find a business partner who will provide it.

Most financially significant negotiations occur between organizations, not individuals—yet individuals, not organizations, negotiate deals. It’s therefore crucial to consider the incentives of the individual across the table: How is she compensated? How long has she worked for the company? What are her long-term aspirations? These questions are ess

private closed-door meetings with each partner and asking “What, precisely, is it that is going to make you special (or even more special) in the marketplace over the next few years? Would you like to develop a specialized expertise in a particular technical area, in certain types of transaction, in the problems of certain types of clients?

American corporations had become obsessed with talent.

Whether you’re at school, a start-up, or a corporation, everyone wants the same things: success, validation, skills, and economic security.

As she explained, “Getting people to agree to give up control is like math; order matters. I create an initial talk track or business case and then I select a colleague to practice it on. Usually, it is someone who has a small ERP project that would be subsumed in the consolidation and I try to get their support for the change. If I succeed in conv

As the Ferrazzi story and research discussed in this chapter show, launching or relaunching your career requires that you develop both the ability and the willingness to ask for things and that you learn to stand out.

such alumni are often the source of future business for the firm when they recommend to their corporate employers hiring their old firm