Patricia Sherlock

“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.” — Peter Drucker Right now, something I see companies grappling with is the issue of how to serve the customer moving forward. Today’s consumers are more educated and have better access to information than ever before.

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” — Peter Drucker In my work with financial firms, I often see two distinct camps when it comes to sales professionals: order-takers and consultative salespeople. While order-takers tend to be pleasant people, they have trouble delivering results in a tougher production environment. The reality

“It is easier to turn competent managers into star performers than to turn incompetent managers into competent ones.” — Peter Drucker This “Druckerism” illustrates a phenomenon that I encounter frequently in my consulting business. In financial firms both large and small, I find companies investing precious training dollars to transform C players into A players

“The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow. It is to decide what to abandon. In order to grow, a business must have a systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete and the unproductive.” — Peter Drucker In the financial sector, something I see

“Leadership is a foul-weather job. The most important task of an organization is to anticipate crisis. To wait until the crisis hits is already abdication.” This quote from “Inside Drucker’s Brain,” Jeffrey Krames’ text on management icon Peter Drucker, underscores the role great business leaders must take regardless of the economic climate. True leaders anticipate

In my recent travels around the country, I’m seeing a lot of activity in financial services. Some companies are doing phenomenal business and are finding it a real challenge to add staff. One trend I observed: Companies are hiring teams of people from a single branch versus hiring individual sales professionals. In most cases, the

Treating sales persons like a dog–may sound unusal but actually is a smart strategy. Why? Because sales people like dogs respond to positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is a fancy word that means that the best way to change the techniques of a sales person is actually quite similar to clicker training that is done with

When I was listening to the president speak last night, it struck me when he said that we all must commit to obtaining more advance training or learning –well I can\’t agree with him more.  A competitive marketplace is often separated by the better trained and more talented work force. This made me think—when I

When I was listening to the president speak last night, it struck me when he said that we all must commit to obtaining more advance training or learning –well I can\’t agree with him more.  A competitive marketplace is often separated by the better trained and more talented work force. This made me think—when I