BLArticle®
The personal touch of a blog; the informative touch of an article.
Coaching Versus Mentoring – I Can Tell You The Difference
Do you know the difference between “coaching” and “mentoring?” Most people don’t. As a matter of fact, most people use the two terms interchangeably as if there is no difference. Well, there happens to be a big difference. You could go to Webster’s...
A Formula for Success – Burn The Ships
I admire my daughter. She will be graduating in five months, and when she does, she’s heading to New York to begin the working part of her journey through life. She has no job yet, no place to live yet, and she barely knows her way around Syracuse let alone one of...
My Kind of Cancellation
Mark these words well, because you won’t hear them uttered by me often. I received a cancellation for a presentation I was scheduled to deliver in January… and I’m happy about it. No, I haven’t been hitting the eggnog; I’m truly happy about it. The request came in...
A Ride to Remember
This week’s blog was supposed to be about a sales message that I think would have hit home for many of us, but a chance encounter with a driver in Kansas City has interrupted that message. We’ll get to it another time. I need to tell you about my new...
Follow Up – Whose Responsibility is it Anyway?
This week I had a Skype call with a European company I work with. If you look at the duration of the relationship you would probably consider it a good one. They have been my European partner teaching one of my programs now for five years. If you look at the way we...
Getting Closer to the Real World
The other week I was putting on a program for a good client of mine and I was really strutting my stuff. I had a right to! The client I was working for had asked that I put on a program that was as close to the real world as possible. This was a...
Building Trust: It’s So Obvious You Can Miss It
It seems like yesterday when I sat in a room with a handful of developers at Xerox and together we created a sales model that would be a key component for not only the sales force at Xerox, but their clients as well. It was a model that would be used for decades and...
Airlines – Equal Opportunity Irritators
Hey, I have a novel idea – let’s pick on an industry that doesn’t seem to be in the news enough; the airline industry. Before you say, “Come on Rob, are you running out of blogs already!? This is too easy!” I’ll make you a deal. We’ll just...
A Return To Royalty
Some blogger I am. A momentous milestone in my Road Warrior life came and went a couple of months ago, and I forgot to mention it. Let me make amends for my careless transgression. I’m a Premier again with United Airlines. For those who don’t travel,...
The Battle to Implement
There’s a battle that’s been brewing for some time now in the field of training. This battle is between those who have been trained, and those who manage those who have been trained. In short, management believes that when they have invested in a process,...
The Only Thing We Have to Fear is… The Fear of Change
For over two decades I have asked audiences a simple question, “What is your biggest fear?” The question is asked not to depress my audiences, or to place a dark cloud over the session I am about to conduct, but rather to expose these fears, and ultimately work...
Too Good to Receive Help
Have you ever felt you were so good at what you did that you did not need any help in getting better? The bad news is, if that describes who you are, you are in a lot of trouble. The good news is, you are one decision away from getting out of...
Shoot the Sales Trainer
Conventional sales techniques have not worked well in the past, and they sure as heck don't work very well today. In spite of the millions of dollars spent annually to train corporate sales forces how to sell, they fail again and again. There are two major reasons for...
Taming the “Victim Voice”
This week I found myself out in Los Angeles with a rare opportunity. I had the opportunity to perform a business “do-over.” Let me jump in the “Way Back Machine” and give you the back-story here. Six years ago I conducted a seminar in Las Vegas that did not go...
“Tales From The Field”
This week I had the privilege of receiving an email from someone I have been coaching regarding a deal they landed. I liked this person before I received the email. I grew to respect this person after I received the email. Let me tell you why. What I read was more...
For Want of an Upgrade
Now that we are heading out of summer and into cooler days, here's a reprint of an article I wrote last winter. Enjoy... I've never been one for big cars. At 5’ 10”, or at least that’s how I was listed in my high school basketball program, I just don’t feel right in...
Count to… Tomorrow
Have you ever heard the expression, “Before you respond, count to ten” before? In this economy I’m changing that expression to, “Before you respond, count to… tomorrow.” Counting to ten just isn’t long enough anymore. That’s because we’re all a little raw right now....
The Real Story
I promised I would not write this particular blog. I promised my niece Stacy, and I promised myself. Who needs to hear about some pathetic mishap on another road trip? Nope, I wasn’t going to write about this one… that is until I figured out what the real message of...
A Chance Encounter
I’m a writer. If you haven’t figured this out by now, you don’t know Rob Jolles. I didn’t say I was a great writer; I’ll let you be the judge of that, but I do like to write. I’ve been doing it my whole life. The absolute best times I like to write are when I’m on...
A Decision & Performance To Remember
For twenty-five years I’ve either pulled a microphone out of a mike stand, or clipped a microphone to my tie and worked a room. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for a day, and when I was younger, sometimes for as long as two weeks. I thought I had...
“Rob is an expert not only in the art of influence,
but also in human nature.”
~Ken Blanchard,
coauthor of The One Minute Manager® and Trust Works!