Management Consulting News Podcast Channel - MCNews Live

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Michael McLaughlin

From communicating your message to managing clients and projects, tune in for the latest ideas to help you grow your business.

Research shows that more than 75 percent of people dislike their jobs.

Why? According to Tim Irwin, author of Run With the Bulls Without Getting Trampled, inept managers, downsizings, misguided compensation systems, and endless turnover are all part of the problem. And Irwin has a solution that we can all use to help ourselves, or others, make the most from the time devoted to a career.

His framework for achieving success in a corporate “run with the bulls” is a simple prescription, but it’s not simplistic. Irwin also offers an online assessment to help you plot your own path. Details are available at www.runwiththebulls.net.

Time: 15:07
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Have you ever read a news story about corporate executives steering their companies onto the rocks and wondered, what were those people thinking? Examples abound—Parmalat, Enron, WorldCom, and even HP with its infamous pretexting scandal.

Our guest, Mathew Hayward, professor at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, has an answer. Hayward is the author of the new book, Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap.

What’s interesting about this book is that it’s not just another pot shot at failed executives. Hayward conducted exhaustive research—including hundreds of interviews—to sort out how to manage our confidence—and decision making—so we don’t fall victim to the potentially disastrous trap of false confidence.

And for consultants, it can help us recognize unproductive behavior patterns in our clients and give us a blueprint for helping people understand the implications of their behaviors.

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It's not unusual to hear sales and marketing described as more art than science. And some efforts to bring science to the art of sales and marketing have met with a wall of resistance.

Some people believe that to get better leads, a more cost-effective sales process, and higher profitability, Six Sigma techniques may be the answer. And that's what this podcast is about.

Six Sigma, a rigorous methodology to systematically improve processes through process design and measurement, has been used by scores of organizations, including GE, Motorola, Toyota and many others.

Our guest, Michael Webb believes that many of the usual fixes for problems facing sales and marketing executives don't work. But success may well lie in the use of Six Sigma techniques.

Michael is the author of the book, Sales and Marketing the Six Sigma Way, and the president of Sales Performance Consultants, Inc. Michael has been around sales and marketing for almost 3 decades, so he's seen it all.

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I recently met a consultant who wanted to publish an email-based newsletter for clients and prospects. His problem: he had a very small mailing list and little experience with publishing a newsletter. He wondered if the investment in developing the newsletter would pay off given the effort to get a newsletter launched.

Should consultants use email newsletters? If so, how?

Guest: Michael Katz, Founder of Blue Penguin Development and specialist in helping professional service companies with their e-newsletters.

Time: 15:07
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For years, the influential book Built to Last has generated conversations about the qualities of an enduring organization. Now, the co-author of that book and his colleagues report that they have searched for—and found—the common threads that create a successful life.

In their new book, Success Built to Last, the authors lay out a research-based framework for personal success.

Stewart Emery, co-author of Success Built to Last.

Time: 17:27
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With corporate blogging growing by leaps and bounds and big players like Ford Motors and Sun Microsystems jumping into the fray, you might think corporate blogging is here to stay. But is it just a passing fad?

Guest: Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, The Word Biz Report, and BlogWrite for CEOs. Find out more at www.debbieweil.com.

Time: 12:18
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Open any sales book, newsletter or article and one of the first things you’re likely to read about is the overriding importance of a seller’s value proposition. It’s such common advice that it’s easy to tune it out.

But with everyone selling with value as the foundation, are clients also tuning out the value message? And, if so, what can we do about it?

Guest: Jeff Thull, President and CEO of Prime Resource Group and author of Mastering the Complex Sale and The Prime Solution. Thull’s new book, Exceptional Selling, was released in August 2006. For more information, visit www.primeresource.com.

Time: 20:13
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Although the consulting business is built largely on relationships and repeat work from existing clients, you still need a systematic way to generate leads for new projects. Which lead-generation strategies work best and when?

Guest: Kevin Epstein, marketing executive and author of Marketing Made Easy. Visit www.stupidmarketing.com.

Time: 17:49
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Even if you have an innovative and elegant solution to a tough client problem, your project may be doomed to failure if you and the client can’t rally people around the proposed change. How can we design communication programs that result in consensus, not apathy or confusion?

Guest: Tamara Gillis, Professor of Communications at Elizabethtown College and the editor of the IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication. Learn more about Professor Gillis.

Time: 21:35
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