The 80-Hour Week

Women are making the economy "go around"

I'm doing some research for a client on the subject of corporate support for post-secondary education i Ontario, and on the way ran into this from a speech to The Economic Club of Toronto in June 2006, by Barbara G. Stymiest Chief Operating Officer of RBC Financial Group.                                                       

Much of the momentum within this new dynamic is coming from women. If you didn't see it in the Globe a few weeks ago let me recall for you the conclusions reached in an article written by Heather Scofield and Tavia Grant: women are making the economy "go around".

58 percent of all women of working age in Canada now have  jobs. In the United States women are responsible for 100 percent  of the growth in real household income between 1970 and 2004.48 percent of stock market investors are women. In developed markets around the world, women control or influence more than 75 percent of discretionary spending.

In the April 12th edition of the Economist magazine it is suggested that "…women are more likely to provide sound advice on investing their parents' nest egg: surveys  show that women consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do."

Cool. Pay attention.

Highest-Rated Tools, Tips and Tricks for Acccount Executives in Complex Environments

I've just come back from teaching a 2-day seminar for senior sales executives called Advanced Account Management and High-Yield Selling. This is always a challenging couple of days because the participants are a lot smarter than I am, usually - certainly keeps you from getting uppity!

The course is designed to help with accounts that require a real relationship to make them viable: accounts with long closing times, complex solutions and high lifetime values. We get people in banking, technology and research as well as business owners and entrepreneurs. We also provide a similar course to account executives in advertising agencies through the Institute of Communications and Advertising (ICA).

So what do participants find most helpful? Well, there seems to be three kinds of people in the course: those who love new concepts, or frames of reference (i.e. saying the same thing in a different way, so you can see new approaches to a problem); those that love the analytical tools; and those who find the very structured approach to tasks a huge time saver.

I thought I'd take some time over the next few posts to share the ideas we explore in the course. Thanks as always to my pal Al Offstein, who shares so much of his wisdom with me.

Highest-Rated Tools, Tips and Tricks
The Atom of Work
Every project or interaction can be seen as a simple, 4-step process
Clientship
High-margin, loyal client relationships have four key attributes that must be present
Gap Analysis
There are only 6 gaps you have to identify and narrow between you and your client
Curiosity
The secret weapon to create meaningful and relevant client relationships
The Chunk Outline
How to decide what to say in any situation even with 5 minutes or less to prepare
How Executives Make Decisions
The 6 heuristics senior managers use to decide what to do under pressure

You can let me know if anything on the list interests you particularly.