I have been saying this for years: Focus is the key to CEO success. “As a leader, if you lack focus, you’ll eventually destroy your business. These 6 tips will help you keep on task,” writes Glen Stansberry, Co-founder, Gentlemint on AMEX Open Forum. “Remember, the ability to focus is a learned habit, just like anything else. Start practicing today.”

I also think Drive is pretty important. If you are truly driven to your goal, you will be focused. Not everyone has that will to be driven and focused. It’s hard work and you have to give stuff up. Most don’t like to sacrifice stuff.

FYI: Infographic: Why companies with great customer service succeed

Richard Branson on How to Make The Most of Your Network

The Many Markets for Voice. It is how people view voice as a component notsomuch a stand-alone service any more.

25 Holiday marketing Tips.

As we approach Thanksgiving, besides the Black Friday and Holiday shopping bonanza, there are other things to do: new year planning, goal setting, holiday marketing, sales and selling, and end-of-year accounting tasks.

In your new year planning, consider some marketing especially online marketing. Content is the key to SEO these days. And people research a lot online before engaging any sales team.

I will be holding another Goal Setting & Sales Planning webinar Nov. 25th. Register here!

There are 2 categories – goal setting and sales planning – to get a better idea of what to emphasize on the call.

There is also a package available for $149 for managers looking for guidance on Performance Reviews as well as the webinar on goals & sales planning. The package gets you an hour of one-on-one time with me to talk about the performance review process.

In a price war (like for consumer triple-play bundles) is the significant metric units sold or margin or ARPU (average revenue per user)? It depends on who you are playing for – VCs, Wall Street, owners.

Let’s say that you sell DSL for $20 and you typically sell X quantity per month. But you want to sell 2X quantity so you decide to lower the cost to $15. For one, can you double sales with your current system? Can you deploy double the sales?

The fact is that you will probably only sell 1.3X at $15, not 2X at $20. Your funnel, sales team, sales process, back office probably can’t just turn up to twice the sales, even at a 25% reduction.

Let’s say X equals 40 customer; at $20 brings in $800. Yet 1.3 times 40 is 52 units at $15, which grosses at $780. OOPS! More work less revenue. More units, more support, more everything for less revenue, less margin.

Just some food for thought.

“The phone companies are following in the footsteps of DirecTV and Dish, which started eating into cable’s monopoly position in pay television in the 1990s. But the satellite-TV firms, unable to offer competitive broadband services, face greater challenges now that broadband has become a crucial product for TV providers to sell.” [Read the rest on WSJ]