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sales training
A New Classic for Selling
I choose to use this week's blog real estate to tell you about a wonderful book called Selling Fearlessly, written by Bob Terson. Here's my Amazon review of Bob's book.
I've come to learn that Bob Terson is a classic. So is his book Selling Fearlessly.
From the title, so innocently cutting to the core of why some sellers never reach their peak.
To the dedication that is explained in his introduction, that tells you Bob understands respect and loyalty.
To Bob's favorite book on selling, a 1947 work that shaped him to be the salesperson he has become.
I can honestly say I've never read a book on selling like Selling Fearlessly and I've not been moved more by any book on selling I've ever read.
Why should you read Selling Fearlessly?
To be inspired.
Bob is a master story teller. If you have to know why this is inspiring you haven't heard a good sermon or homily lately and that's too bad. He tells stories about winning over Donald Trump, never losing faith (The Mound Road Story), not being intimidated (Captain Bly), being memorable (Make Sure the Customer Remembers You), and many, many more.
To be educated.
Bob offers plenty of advice that can make you better or help you stay on top of your sales game. And because the game of selling is changing that's pretty important.
To be moved to take action.
He reminds you that while you need to keep your eyes and ears open to witness the lessons before you life isn't a spectator sport. My favorite line of the entire book: A salesperson is the engineer of commerce. Until he takes action nothing happens.
There is one downfall of Bob's book. It's such an easy, enjoyable read that before you know it you will have reached the last page.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Sales Pipeline Management
Several years ago Public Television sponsored a competition called Frontier House. Several families traded in their comfortable homes and modern day lifestyles to live a simulated life in 1880s Montana. This was no walk in the park, fake reality TV experience. From late spring to fall these families lived the frontier experience, Montana style 24/7.
The goal of the competition was to prove they could survive the coming winter. This meant stockpiling food in underground pantries they made with shovels; equipping the home to withstand the cold; chopping enough wood to heat and cook during the winter months. Without wood there's no fire. And without fire there's no heat and no way to cook foods. Like Jeff on Survivor tells us, fire represents life.
It was critical that the families correctly calculated their needs to get through the winter. Then they worked back from that to know how to spend their time every day preparing. If they calculated wrong, or worse just got lazy in their execution their 'lives' would be in jeopardy. Of course back in the real Montana it was no game. Surviving was the incentive.
A panel of historical experts judged the competitors on how well they prepared. In the end only one family won, but the judges said even this family would have barely survived.
If you think of your sales funnel as a pile of wood to keep you warm throughout the winter, the question is are you chopping enough wood to survive?
Just as a furnace produces heat only if it's full of wood your funnel produces revenue only if it has qualified leads that eventually close. Keep it full of enough qualified leads throughout the year and you achieve your quota.
The coming year is already here. Here are some strategies for keeping your sales funnel full and enjoying the fruits of that labor 12 months from now:
1) Manage to Target TVR. Measure the health of your funnel using TVR, Total Viable Revenue. TVR deals are only the deals that have reached a stage where the customer has committed to making a change or purchase. Working back from quota you can clearly define the Target TVR, that is how big you need your funnel to be. A $3M quota with a 50% win rate means your funnel needs to be $6M of TVR. As sales go up throughout the year the Target TVR goes down, but the key is to manage to the Target TVR, not to your quota gap.
2) Be selective in the opportunities you pursue. Nothing improves sales performance efficiency like purging the deals that take too much time to win and are not worth winning in the first place. Winning the right deals takes no more time than winning deals that are not a good fit or profitable.
3) Re-win the business you have at your best customers. Like the couples who renew their wedding vows after 40, 50, or 60 or more years go back to your current, best customers and show them how much you appreciate their business. Show them the love! This is an annuity that you cannot afford to take for granted.
4) Get into a Funnel Audit plan, do, check, adjust routine. There's no better habit than one that commits you to a regular schedule of diagnosing your funnel and setting monthly action plans. Spotty diagnosis is a sure way for execution to suffer.
5) Every time you close a sale commit time to replacing it with 3-4 new opportunities. There's no better time to add TVR to your funnel than after you have closed a sale. You're feeling good, you can take the rejections, you've got energy. Get back out there and build funnel value now.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )
Death of New Products
Is your selling approach killing sales of your company's new products?
Years ago, Neil Rackham, author of SPIN Selling and Rethinking the Sales Force published a paper that showed how the sales forces of three well known companies were failing to meet sales expectations of each company's newly launched products.
These products were not just new. They were ground breaking technologies that the market would have been excited to have.
Rackham's consulting and training company was involved in training each of the salesforces. When sales did not meet early expectations his clients asked him to figure out what was going wrong.
Rackham is known best for his research based book SPIN Selling. He researched 35,000 sales calls and used that to create the sales method SPIN. In that research he and his team found a positive correlation between the number of questions asked and the success of the sales call. The more questions asked the more likely the call succeeded.
They also found that product features were negatively correlated with call success. In calls that failed salespeople described more than twice as many features of products and services they were selling as they did during the calls that succeeded.
For his three clients that were experiencing troubling results with their new products he and his team went on sales calls and observed the sellers in action. Since the products were complex and required more questions to understand the complexity of the customer's needs, they all expected to hear more questions being asked.
They discovered something entirely different.
Sellers were asking 40% fewer questions in selling these new products. The average length of the sales calls were even longer than the length of sales calls for other products. What were sellers doing on these calls? Spending a lot more time describing features. Oops.
In a non research world we'd call that data dumping, showing up and throwing up, or throw it on the wall to see what sticks. Not exactly model behavior for fundamentally good selling.
This paper was published in the early 1990s. Mistakes like this still happen today. For example, while many of the exciting new technologies under the sales 2.0 era are shaking up sales effectiveness many of the products are sold by way of doing a 'demo'. A demo is often done over the web without either party traveling. Demos focus on showing how products work.
One company with a pretty cool technology did a demo to me after I stopped by its booth at the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco. The sales rep didn't know what I did for a living. She hadn't prepared any questions for the call. I gave her a bit of a hard time. The ultimate insult would be for me to buy the technology and reinforce her weak selling behavior.
In another demo example a client of mine was paying a hefty finders type fee to its channel partners in Asia to set up demos of its software product. Unfortunately my client's sales and technical staff often showed up ready to do the demo and discovered that key people weren't invited, or just as bad no clear reason for doing the demo was defined. In these situations the demo is a wasted, expensive selling resource. On the other hand, when the right people attend the demo and a call to action is identified and agreed to upfront demos can be a key catalyst in moving sales forward.
There are a number of reasons why this stuff still happens. Companies are excited about their new products and they forget that the customer still has to express a need for them. Let's hope that the new products have been through a research process that showed there really is a need for them.
When salespeople are trained in a new product they are mostly trained in features and functions. They learn how it's different from what it's replacing. They learn how to price it. Usually the section on learning how to uncover customers' needs get footnote attention. I don't know if the Veeps of Sales are assuming "Of course we've still got to ask questions and do discovery duh!" Their assumption is a sign of poor leadership.
On your next sales call leave the product in the car, or do the equivalent online – leave the demo in the demo file. Ask some Stage 1 questions. Find out who the PFA could be. Seek an Advocate who has tremendous energy for change and is willing to take responsibility for it. Ask some Stage 2 questions to see if the customer has explored the financial impact of the problem or situation. And by all means do at least a little research to know business the customer is in.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Sales Recovery: Repairing Broken Relationships
Remember the scene in To Catch a Thief when John Robie, aka 'the Cat', aka Cary Grant, escapes into the restaurant of his old resistance friend to avoid the French gendarmerie nationale? Looking out onto the kitchen from inside the owner's glass office suddenly an egg explodes on the window. His former resistance friends working the kitchen no longer want anything to do with him because they think he's stealing jewels again and bringing attention to them. As ex cons they'd rather lay very low. It seems he's run from one enemy into the arms of another.
If you've ever taken over a territory and walked into an account and found the natives ready to burn you at the stake you know how John Robie felt. Don't feel bad for him however. He spent the rest of the movie being seduced by Grace Kelly.
A recent sales strategy session with a client reminded me of how as a new rep in a new territory you can turn a situation going south into an opportunity.
Joe works for a food service company in Texas. He's the number one rep in his company. He's set so many records the company will have to reset all standards. During a Funnel Audit recently he described his approach to an account that had problems related to a previous employee. He said when he walks into this account he actually senses the energy being drained from the room. He doesn't dispute the previous problems. Joe had this account on his Buy Cycle Funnel because he felt it has long term potential.
Bam! Lesson one – don't be afraid to go back into an account that your previous rep screwed up. This sounds simple, but it's tempting to avoid things that cause heartburn. In this case there's no purple pill you can take.
Joe continued. He said he doesn't take it personally that this account doesn't like his company.
Bam! Lesson two – it's not about you when you inherit a gnarly situation.
I asked Joe what his objectives are when he goes into this account and he said it's to repair the relationship first, then qualify some new opportunities if possible.
Bam! Lesson three – Joe's not selling because there's no buying going on. Over time Joe's salve on the relationship will heal it to a point where the stakeholders give him and his company another shot at business.
About twenty years ago I learned a valuable lesson like this when I inherited a trouble account in a territory selling medical devices to hospitals. My predecessor was so good that he sold more stuff than the hospitals needed. Impressive right? Hardly.
The operating room manager wanted to take my head off when she learned I worked for the company whose products were sitting idle on her shelf. After confirming there was no doctor who would use these products I agreed to return them. She never forgot that. As a result she gave me access to doctors later and eventually I sold them the products. Everyone was happy.
By the way, To Catch a Thief isn't Hitchcock's best but between scenes of the French Riviera and Ms. Kelly, or Mr. Grant, you can temporarily forget about those tough customers.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )
Global Sales Mumbai Magic
Recently I was invited by a client based in Singapore to on-board new sales teams in Mumbai, India, Shanghai and Singapore in my company's Funnel Principle selling process.
The highlight of the trip was something I wasn't expecting.
The first stop was Mumbai, India. It was tempting for me to treat the Mumbai segment as a warm up to the excitement and intrigue of Shanghai and the exoticness of Singapore. It was the beginning of the monsoon season and western India summer heat can easily top 100 degrees.
I got a lot of advice before leaving. "It's not safe to walk around the city", one person told me. Mumbai was the site of the 2008 terrorist attack that killed nearly 200 people so I took this advice seriously. "Don't drink any water from any source", another person said. A client from another company told me to pack a suitcase of Power Bars. "Get vaccines for hepatitis A (liver inflammation caused by ingesting bad food or drink) and B (same caused by the transfer of bodily fluids)", someone else told me. Whatever I do, said one more, take plenty of Immodium for diarrhea.
The interesting thing that I didn't realize until after my visit was that no one said to be sure to take notice of the spirit of the Indian people.
Mumbai didn't start well. I arrived in Newark to find an email saying my direct flight was cancelled. I would have to taxi to La Guardia (90 minutes in traffic, $130) to catch a new flight. Instead of direct to Mumbai we first flew to Paris (8 hours), then to New Delhi (9 hours). It was now midnight the next day for me. We left Delhi but stopped 45 minutes later in Indore for no reason. I was told this by the guy next to me in business class, an Air India pilot who said the pilot's strike now in its second month was causing much havoc. We left Indore at 1:15 AM and landed in Mumbai at 2am. I had been traveling for 31 hours. My meeting would begin at 800 sharp.
Mumbai is a city of contrasts. My 5 star Hyatt had exceptional service and amenities but the scene outside my conference room window was different. Security guards at the hotel entrance were busy checking the underside of all cars for bombs; my hotel was all glass and steel and marble, yet across the street was a row of old shack type structures, maybe businesses, with dirt sidewalks; I saw a cow feasting on a pile of roadside garbage the size of half a basketball court, yet inside I feasted on a phenomenal buffet of fish and vegetables and spices and herbs that made my taste buds do the tango; I saw feral dogs wandering the streets desperately in search of a meal. I started every day by piling on my plate large slices of deeply orange alphonso mangos that were perfectly in season.
The pleasant young man serving breakfast was deeply interested in where I was from. He stayed around my table for at least five minutes. He could picture New York and California but Ohio and the Great Lakes were unclear.
At lunch a woman escorted me from the conference room to the dining area, something completely unnecessary but refreshingly memorable. I said I needed to use the toilet (it's not a bathroom) and as she walked me to the hallway she slipped and went crashing down, but somehow I grabbed her and prevented her fall. She was embarrassed, but each day her good morning smile had a touch of personal meaning.
One evening we taxied into the city to the Gateway of India, an 85 foot high arch built as a welcoming place for dignitaries traveling by sea. Then we went to the famous Café Leopold, a chic place that was the first target of the terrorist attack in 2008. The streets were overcrowded with taxis, tuk-tuks (3-wheeled taxis), motorbikes, trucks, trash, debris, people, all converging like traffic leaving a state fair parking lot after a Jason Aldean concert. At the restaurant, we immediately were handled by several staff getting us to our tables, getting our beers and bringing appetizers. We seldom waited longer than you'd expect for anything.
After dinner, around 11 o'clock, we took another adventuresome ride in tuk-tuks to the famous Juhu beach where many Bollywood celebrities live. There was a warm breeze coming in off of the Arabian Sea and there were people everywhere. My hosts were thrilled when I asked if Anil Kapoor had a place here.
Unlike in too many parts of Europe, in Mumbai this American felt welcomed everywhere I went.
My flight to Shanghai was scheduled for 1:30AM so we returned to the hotel. By the end of the Mumbai leg I was exhausted in a completely satisfying way. The Indian sales team was by far the most pleasant, upbeat and easy going group I worked with. They were rightfully proud of their city and country took nothing for granted. I can't wait to go back.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Sales Pipeline: How to Build a Healthy Sales Funnel
Do you know your number?
I'm not talking about your cholesterol level (I did have mine checked recently) or the amount of money you'll need when you retire.
If retirement is too far off or too painful to think about let me shock you into a reality closer to home – how big your sales funnel has to be to achieve your quota next year. Let's call this 'your number'.
Your number is key to your sales success for a simple reason – you don't have a 100% win rate. Unless your sales funnel is big enough – your number – you're not likely to hit quota next year.
Building funnel health for 2012 is pretty much over. You need to turn your funnel health building to 2013. If you haven't aggressively begun doing that already you could be in for an unpleasant surprise next year as you slowly discover the naked truth of your skinny, anemic funnel.
Let's use an example. If you've got a million dollar quota and you have a sales funnel full of a million dollars of opportunities you would need to win 100% of those opportunities to hit quota. A better way to ensure success is to have a sales funnel with more than a million dollars of opportunities on it. But how much more do you need?
How much you need, aka your number, depends on your win rate for an average sized sale. In addition to knowing your number you've got to know your win rate.
If you have a 50% win rate for an average sized sale your funnel needs to be twice as large as your quota. A million dollar quota should have two million dollars of opportunities on it.
If you have a 33% win rate for an average sized sale your funnel needs to be three times as large as your quota. A million dollar quota should have three million dollars of opportunities on it.
If you have a 25% win rate for an average sized sale your funnel needs to be four times as large as your quota. A million dollar quota should have four million dollars of opportunities on it.
There's an important safety tip to this strategy. It's not about 'filling your funnel'. It's about TVR – Total Viable Revenue. A sales opportunity on your funnel can be counted toward funnel value (TVR) only if that opportunity has reached 'commit funding' stage.
You can't fool your number. The only way you'll consistently hit quota with a funnel that is smaller than it needs to be is if your win rate for the average sized sale goes up. Of course that can happen, but a dramatic increase overnight is not something you should bet the farm on.
Keep in mind that I'm using quota to make the point that on day one of your new fiscal year your number is a function of quota. But as you win sales throughout the year your number is a function of how much sales you have left to win to hit your quota. Your number goes down as you win sales. For example, in June if you're halfway toward hitting a million dollar quota your number is a function of the $500,000 you have left to win.
Here are a few things you should consider doing now:
One, determine your number. Start with win rate. Then divide the number 1 by the percent win rate to get a number we'll call the funnel factor. For example, a 25% win rate would get you a factor of four and a 50% win rate gets you a factor of two. Finally, multiply the remaining sales you have to close by your funnel factor. That's your number.
Two, commit time to aggressive prospecting. It's easy to neglect this part of selling because you don't feel the effect of the neglect until it's too late in the year when you discover that you don't have anything on your funnel. By then you can't do anything about it. It's like maintaining your car's good condition with regular oil changes and more to prevent it from breaking down on the side of the road later. Book prospecting time on your calendar for the next 30 days right now.
Three, build a habit of inspecting your funnel every 30 days. You sales funnel is changing all the time as you find and qualify and win and lose sales. Your funnel value is also changing. It's a leading indicator that puts you in the driver's seat for proactively running your territory.
The value of managing to this strategy is that you avoid surprises of having a funnel that isn't big enough to let your win rate do its job. You stay on the offensive. You give yourself time to take corrective action if necessary.
So don't wait. Go find your number. And while you're at it get your cholesterol checked.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )
Sales Proposals 5 Tips
I want to give you some tips on delivering compelling proposals.
No, not this kind of proposal, though it can be the toughest sale some guys make!
First, the best proposals demonstrate to the customer a good understanding of the customer's needs. When you struggle to believe your own proposal it's probably due to not knowing the customer's needs that well. If you have time before you present it consider calling an Advocate to get insight.
Two, try to never just send the proposal in any form. Unless you don't have faith in your own selling ability. A proposal presentation is an excellent opportunity to sell. You link your solution to the customer's needs. You see the reactions of the stakeholders. You have a better chance of getting the customer to commit to a call to action. You learn which options the customer prefers and why. Which leads me to the next tip.
Three, give the customer more than one option to buy from you. Giving only one option invites the customer to show you the door if that option isn't valued. By giving multiple options you show flexibility and willingness to make it work for the customer. Usually that suggests that once you get the business you'll continue to work with the customer collaboratively and flexibly. Finally, by offering more than one option you invite the customer to think of options you haven't – like combining elements of option 1 and 3 to make option 4. Again this invites collaboration and improves your chances of making a sale.
Four, don't be shy about putting the competition in its place. This is your chance to differentiate. One way to do that is to be clear about factual shortcomings of the competition. Offer these clearly with evidence to support them. Unless the shortcoming is a deal breaker don't dwell on it. Quickly move on to the next item. You've made your point. One way to differentiate you is to put the competition in its place by positioning them away from you. Remind the stakeholders that you bring a very unique solution to their needs and the competition brings another very unique solution. Link yours back to the customer's needs. If the needs have changed then maybe you're not the best solution.
Finally, a lot of the success of your proposal lies with having the right stakeholders in the meeting. Be sure you get them there. Otherwise you'll be presenting to stakeholders who have no authority to change and perhaps little influence on those who do.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Sales Opportunities Stalled? Here Are 7 Tips for Kick Starting Them
Stalled sales opportunities can drive salespeople crazy. Worse than losing your sanity however is losing slowly and watching your productivity drop like my favorite band in high school, Led Zeppelin.
Inspired by a conversation I recently had with a client of mine, Kevin S., a Vice President of Sales for a national printing company, here's a set of tips on how to kick start stalled opportunities.
Before the tips let me make one important qualifier. Stalled opportunities are not the same as unqualified opportunities. If it's an opportunity then it meets criteria for being qualified at some stage on your funnel. If it's stalled it still has to meet that criteria, otherwise it's no longer an opportunity at any stage on your funnel.
If you confuse stalled opportunities with unqualified opportunities you risk wasting time on leads that aren't qualified at any stage and you might not give sufficient selling time to leads that are already qualified. Don't be afraid of firing unqualified opportunities.
Good selling!
1) Don't just follow up – follow up with purpose. A prospect gets no value out of you following up some previous call or action. Are you completing something you said you would do earlier? Are you delivering something you promised earlier? Do you have additional information you think the prospect should be interested in? Your follow up should have purpose.
2) Don't just check in – bring something of value. If you think the prospect's interest has waned bring him something that might provoke a newly inspired level of interest. This might be an article or white paper or latest news about the situation the customer finds himself in.
3) Help this stakeholder generate interest with other stakeholders. Too often we're quick to anoint a stakeholder as our coach or advocate but we're not as quick to continually feed those stakeholders stuff that helps them sell the change to others. This is also a good way for you to get to other stakeholders who might be a bottleneck in making progress.
4) Validate with your last contact that the situation is a top 2-3 issue. Top 10 issues won't get attention right now. Often the situation hasn't changed, but what you really want to find out is if her energy for the situation has changed. Ask her if the situation is better or worse not to know the answer to that question as much as to read her take on the situation. Does she respond in a disinterested manner or does her face get red and you have to remove all sharp objects from the desk? If it's a top 2-3 issue she's still motivated to do something about.
5) Shift your discovery to learning the financially compelling characteristics of the problem. There's nothing like a cost that wasn't budgeted or a top line that isn't meeting budget to get a PFA's attention. If the problem isn't financially compelling enough to commit funding the stalled lead will stay stalled.
6) Don't let the 'sample' become a sore spot. If you're following up on a sample you gave earlier and every time you 'follow up' you go right to the sample don't be surprised if eventually your stakeholder stops taking your call. Maybe she said yes to the sample too soon – maybe you offered it too soon. You could even be direct about it and say something to the effect of let's forget about the sample for now. I'm not sure I did a good job understanding your needs the first time. Do you have a second to answer a couple of questions?
7) Recommend some ideas as a way to kick start the conversation. "Janey, I was thinking about your situation and I had a couple of ideas that might interest you. Want to chat about it this Friday?" Bringing ideas shows her you're mentally engaged in her problem or situation. Stakeholders like that. One of those ideas could be just the thing to inspire her to take action right now.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Sales Training: Why Role Playing Pays Off
Inspired by a recent deal strategy session with a client of mine and his sales director I wanted to give you three reasons to role play before your next sales call.
Reason #1 – Mulligans are usually better.
If you're a golfer you can relate to this. After you miss a surely makeable putt (and after you curse a few times) you throw another ball down and strike it right in the heart of the cup! Or after you block slice one out of bounds you re tee another ball and split the fairway. When you make a sales call the second time, or third time – by role playing – for sure you will do something better on each subsequent 'call' because you'll learn from the previous one. By the time you make the actual sales call you're ready to nail it. If you doubt this think of the last sales call you made where you got to the car and said "I wish I would have…" There's always something else, something more we wish we would have said or asked or done. So role play and get your second chance the first time.
Reason #2 – You build confidence and confidence helps your customer believe you.
By role playing you gain confidence in what you want to say and ask and how to do that. Then when you're 'live' on the call you're saying it exactly as you have rehearsed it and your confidence will come through.
Reason #3 – Doing doesn't make perfect. Practice makes perfect. Role playing is practice. Doing is not.
When you sell, you do. Doing is not practicing. So don't mislead yourself into thinking that all the doing you do every day when you're doing what you do when you're selling is automatically making you a better seller. Do you know which group of motorcycle riders has the highest rate of accidents? The ones that have had their licenses for a long time and have not committed to annual training courses. They get lazy, they take risks, they stop anticipating, they crash their motorcycles.
Don't crash your motorcycle. Role play.
Good selling,
MarkRead Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )
Sales Process: I'll Take the Barbacoa Please with Pinto Beans and Brown Rice
I love Chipotle. They've got a great story. Their food is tasty. And most important they make it easy for me to buy from them.
Several years ago my wife and I alternated between taking our kids to Chipotle and another mexican fast casual place in our hometown. This other place was also 'corporate' – at the time, like Chipotle, it was either owned by a big parent company or had big parent investors (neither one is owned by a big parent company today).
However, more times than I care to describe the other joint failed to get our food right. I think the main reason had to do with simplicity of operations and the focus of the entire strategy – the place that kept getting my meal wrong wasn't simple to order from and didn't have simple operations. Chipotle has both. This sounds so easy and yet it's so hard to do.
Simplicity is also the key to getting your sales teams to adopt a sales strategy and change how they sell. When your strategy or sales method is simple it's easier to learn. When it's easy to learn it's easier to use. When it's easy to use you're more likely to use it. When you use the new sales method repeatedly you're more likely to get good at it.
A simple sales method is also easier to coach to. Think of it as having fewer moving parts and therefore fewer ways to screw it up. Sales managers can more easily stay on message and focus when it's all simple.
So what does a simple sales method look like? A simple sales method could be as straightforward as BANT – budget, authority, need, timing. That's brilliant isn't it? My friend Brian Dietmeyer has a simple, powerful negotiation method. No one has a monopoly on simple but there are some methods that take the prize for being downright over engineered and overly complex. They claim that a complex sale needs a complex sales process. I disagree.
Customers tell us that our BuyCycle Funnel is simple. The Commit Funding stage is the pivotal stage where the PFA chooses to no longer live with the problem. Whether or not the PFA has committed to that is simple yet so powerful. If they've Committed Funding your strategy should focus on persuading the customer to buy your solution. If they haven't Committed Funding your strategy should focus on finding a financially compelling case for the problem.
Another simple context is for running meetings. What's the purpose of this meeting? What outcomes are we focused on getting? What's the agenda? Who's keeping us on task? Who's keeping us on time? Ok, let's go!
Chipotle has made it simple to eat well and get through lunch in a reasonable time. You pick the style (burrito? salad? bowl?), then rice or not, then beans or not, then you pick the filling, then salsa, then toppings. AND, in case you're delirious from the smells or distracted by that lousy meeting you escaped from before lunch they remind you what to do at each step.
VPs of Sales or CEOs, Presidents, or others considering how to get your sales organization to adopt change and improve sales performance: Keep it simple. Stay on message. Don't let up.Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )
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The Crew earned a point at home Sunday against Sporting Kansas City to remain in within reach of a playoff spot in the MLS Eastern Conference. Here are three things that stood out from the draw:
Yet again, the Crew looked to be headed for defeat but for some late-game heroics from Eddie Gaven and Emilio Rentería. The two connected for a 91st minute equalizer to secure the point aganst the Eastern Conference leaders.
"Emilio [Rentería] played in a great ball, hit it in with pace," Gaven described the play. "I made a run to the near post, just jumped up and was able to get my head on it. I thought [SKC goalkeeper Jimmy Nielsen] saved it actually when it first went on goal, but luckily it kind of squeaked in the near post there."
The Crew sits in sixth place thanks to Gaven's goal, a point behind the Houston Dynamo for the fifth and final playoff spot.
Though the Crew had hoped to earn a full three points on Sunday, the club was happy to earn at least a point against Eastern Conference leaders Sporting Kansas City after trailing for 81 minutes.
"We're happy that we came back obviously after going down 1-0 – that we didn't lose here at home," Gaven explained. "At the same time everybody knows, this is a game we should have gotten three points from."
Moving forward, Gaven feels there is plenty of room for improvement.
"There's things we can take from [the game] for sure in terms of the things we did well, but obviously there are some things we have to work on," the midfielder said. "Probably the biggest thing is working on coming out stronger in the first 10 minutes."
With the draw, the Crew will have to win its remaining two games and hope for the best elsewhere around the League if it hopes to make the MLS Cup Playoffs.
"Obviously we are a few points behind D.C. and a point behind Houston for now," Head Coach Robert Warzycha said after the match. "We have to win our games and hope for the best. We play every time to win, so it doesn't matter."
Added goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum, "We know we have to win out. Nothing less that that is going to be acceptable for us as far as the playoffs go. At the same time,d we can't have any added pressure. We need to go out one game at a time and make them count."

subset: commoncrawl


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Item #1226
Perennial. Also known as anise hyssop and licorice mint, this native midwestern U.S. perennial is loved by hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. It is as useful in the kitchen as it is beautiful. The leaves and flowers make a refreshing licorice-fruity tea, and can be tossed in salads. The lavender-blue flower spikes are lovely in fresh floral arrangements or dried bouquets. Perennial inUSDA zones 4-8. Fairly drought tolerant once established. Deer and rabbit resistant.
Seedling Image
Full sun to part shade
Blooms midsummer
2' - 4' tall
Days to Emerge:
Seed Depth:
Seed Spacing:
When to sow outside: 1 to 2 weeks after average last frost, and when soil temeprature is 60°-75°F. May also be sown in late fall for spring germination.
When to start inside: RECOMMENDED. 4 to 6 weeks before average last frost.
Special germination instructions: Requires light to germinate; press lightly into soil surface.
Artist: Carolyn Crawford
Item #1226
0.25 grams
These are some simple techniques you can use to extend the life of your cut flowers from days, to over a week.
1) In the morning or early evening,…More…
How does it help me choose varieties for my garden?
The USDA hardiness zone map divides the U.S. into zones based on the historical average lowest winter temperature. Perennials naturally live for more…More…
The following tips will help you create a beautiful garden that is helpful to bees and other beneficial insects.
Create Diversity and Color:…More…


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As she and her high school classmates fled from the gunfire, Hadiya Pendleton screamed that she had been shot, fell to the ground, struggled to get up and fell again, according to her best friend.
The best friend and another girl scrambled to Pendleton's side, cradling her in their arms as others ran for help.
"I was holding her hand trying to talk her through it," her best friend told the Tribune on Thursday. "I was like, 'You're going to be fine, you're going to be OK.'"
But Hadiya, 15, died shortly after a bullet pierced her back Tuesday, igniting outrage over the senseless loss of another young victim of Chicago's out-of-control gun violence and leaving her friends staggered by the horrifying chain of events on what had been a carefree afternoon.
In the account that follows, the Tribune is not naming those who witnessed the shooting and its aftermath because the gunman is still at large.
On Tuesday afternoon, the mood outside King College Prep in North Kenwood was jubilant. The students at the elite high school had just finished final exams, classes had let out early and the winter weather was spectacular, tipping into the low 60s.
Hadiya and her best friend, both sophomores, headed toward a nearby Potbelly's, one of their favorite places to eat, the friend said. But on their way, at about 1:30 p.m., they ran into friends who invited them to Harsh Park, just a few blocks away from the school.
"We were like, 'OK, sure, who doesn't want to walk around outside when it's nice?'" Hadiya's best friend said.
As they walked, the group of about a dozen teens discussed which tests had been easy and which had been hard. Some were volleyball players from King and others went to another high school, Hadiya's friends said.
Once they reached the small, residential park, Hadiya and others headed to a playground where they swung in the warm air while chatting about their plans for the summer and their 16th birthdays. Hadiya's best friend said she and Hadiya had talked about a joint sweet 16 party and possibly wearing matching gold heels and colorful outfits to celebrate the occasion.
But then a sudden downpour drove the teens beneath a metal awning where Hadiya played "Misery Business" by the band Paramore on her cellphone and others tweeted and texted as they waited out the rain.
Minutes later, however, Hadiya's best friend said she saw a gun-wielding male scale the park fence and approach the group. She yelled a warning to her friends, but the gunman opened fire, spraying the teens with bullets as they ran.
Hadiya was struck in the back about 2:20 p.m. One teen suffered a graze wound to an ankle. And a 17-year-old junior at King was hit in the left leg below the calf, according to his mother, who said he was trying to protect his girlfriend.
The teen's mother said that her son, an Eagle Scout, didn't realize he had been shot. He felt a little sting in his leg before he looked down and saw blood.
A nurse who lived in the area and was leaving her home at the time of the shooting ran to the group, applied a makeshift tourniquet to the teen shot in the leg and called 911. The nurse instructed the others on how to take care of Hadiya.
In the meantime, another friend of Hadiya's ran to a nearby Subway restaurant, burst through the door and asked to borrow a man's phone to call 911.
But by then wailing police cars whizzed by toward the park, so she called her mom.
"I told her to stay put," her mother told the Tribune. "I can't even tell you, as a mother, what it's like to get that phone call. My goal was to get to my child."
The friend said that she and Hadiya met freshman year at a high school dance camp. The friend joined poms, while Hadiya became a majorette, traveling to Washington last month to perform in a competition with her squad during President Barack Obama's inauguration weekend.
The girls were nicknamed "twins" by classmates and teachers because of their similar appearance, the friend said. From haircut to smile to skin tone to personalities, the two were hard to tell apart, she said.
Weekend sleepovers, a love for reading and a similar goofiness kept the girls close, she said.
"Our freshman algebra teacher couldn't tell us apart, so he just joked and called us each 'twin,'" the friend said. "We always pretended to be sisters."
Police announced that the reward for the arrest and conviction for Hadiya's killer has been raised to $24,000. The money was raised by clergy and other community leaders. Superintendent Garry McCarthy said a lot of tips have been pouring in.
Police have described the gunman as an African-American male 18 or 19, 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-7, 140 to 150 pounds with a dark complexion. He was wearing a blue skullcap, a gray hooded sweatshirt and beige pants.
Police have stressed that the teens in Hadiya's group who had gathered in the park were not involved in gangs, but that they believe the gunman may have mistaken them for rival gang members.
While there haven't been any gang problems at the park, there has been an internal gang conflict brewing nearby among the Gangster Disciples, police said.
In addition to Hadiya's homicide, there have been two shootings about half a mile from Harsh Park in the first month of 2013, according to police records.
As emergency responders raced to the park Tuesday, the nurse kept pressure on the 17-year-old's leg while Hadiya's best friend felt for Hadiya's pulse.
She had lifted her friend's sweater and saw that she was shot in the back. Blood was everywhere.
Hadiya was mouthing words, seemingly trying to speak.
"She held my hand tighter and I was like, 'We love you, we love you, we love you,'" she said.
Latest News
Tribune reporters Jeremy Gorner and Cynthia Dizikes contributed.


text: "Graceful. . . . A lovely, unique book. . . . A personal journey [that] becomes universal, elevating all in the process." —Los Angeles Times"A thoughtful and fluid meditation on the subject. . . . [Kurtz] might just compel you to call your old grade-school piano teacher to see if she's taking on any new students."—The New York Times Book Review "A sensuous, evocative memoir about love lost and regained. . . . Kurtz has gone back to work on his guitar playing, and his devotion seems like a rebirth of self." —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review"Absorbing . . . [Written] with uncanny sensitivity about his brief career as a professional performer."—The Wall Street Journal


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The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill on Wednesday that quashes the threat of a government shutdown through Sept. 30 and offers lawmakers a chance to end four years of chaotic, crisis-driven budgeting.
The 359-67 vote, reflecting strong bipartisan support in the Republican-controlled chamber, sends the measure to the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate for approval by Saturday.
(Read more: US lawmakers unveil$1.1 trillion spending bill)
The Senate gave itself three more days to consider the measure by approving an extension of current funding that was due to expire at midnight on Wednesday.
The massive "omnibus" spending bill, which funds programs from missile systems to Amtrak rail services, passed with strong majorities of both House Republicans and Democrats. It boosts fiscal 2014 spending on military and domestic discretionary programs by $45 billion over levels that had been scheduled under automatic, "sequester" spending cuts.
(Read more: Raising the debt limit a breeze? Don't bet on it)
The measure fleshes out a budget deal passed in December that also set spending levels for fiscal 2015, eliminating a key source of congressional gridlock for the year ahead. Many lawmakers say this will allow them to pass normal spending bills for the first time since 2009, President Barack Obama's first year in office.
"This is a critical step in the direction of regular order," Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio said of the spending bill.
Stopgap congress
For the past four years, Congress has funded government agencies through a series of stopgap spending bills and funding extensions, with numerous threats of shutdowns and U.S. Treasury debt defaults along the way.
The budget fights, fueled by demands for deficit reduction from the Republicans who seized control of the House in 2010 elections, reached a crescendo in October, when disputes over funding of "Obamacare" health insurance reforms prompted a 16-day shutdown for many agencies, idling thousands of federal workers.
(Read more: Obamacare slowshealth spending-not economy: Orszag)
With public approval ratings plummeting and midterm elections looming in November, Congress has since shown little stomach for further brinkmanship, allowing budget negotiators to craft bipartisan compromises.
But it is far from certain whether those compromises will continue. By March or April, Congress will need to approve another federal debt limit increase, a move that has recently been used by Republicans as a pressure point for more spending cuts.
And lawmakers who did not get the cuts or funding increases they wanted in the omnibus spending bill will be back almost immediately to fight for their priorities as the fiscal 2015 appropriations process gets under way.
Representative Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the process will give Democrats a more time to "plus-up" some programs they believe are still underfunded, such as the National Institutes of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency.
"I'm going to try and adjust the bills to make sure we're addressing the real needs out there," the New York lawmaker told Reuters in an interview.
(Read more: Unemployment aid: What's at stake for US economy)
Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers have said they would seek to eliminate some programs they regard as ineffective in order to find money to fund military priorities they regard as critical.
With non-war, discretionary funding largely unchanged between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015, making those changes will likely prove contentious.


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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra announced Saturday that tests of some ingredients used in infant formula and sports drinks have turned up a type of bacteria that could cause botulism, and customers were urgently checking their supply chains.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) � New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra announced Saturday that tests of some ingredients used in infant formula and sports drinks have turned up a type of bacteria that could cause botulism, and customers were urgently checking their supply chains.
The company is the world's fourth-largest dairy company, with annual revenues of about $16 billion.
The news comes as a blow to New Zealand's dairy industry, which powers the country's economy. New Zealand exports about 95 percent of its milk.
Consumers in China and elsewhere are willing to pay a big premium for New Zealand infant formula because the country has a clean and healthy reputation. Chinese consumers have a special interest after a deadly tainted milk formula scandal involving local producers a few years ago.
The Centers for Disease Control describes botulism as a rare but sometimes fatal paralytic illness caused by a nerve toxin.
Fonterra said it has told eight of its customers of the problem, and they were investigating whether any of the affected product is in their supply chain. Fonterra said those companies, which it did not identify, will initiate consumer product recalls if the bacteria is found.
Fonterra didn't offer details on the customers, countries or specific products which may be affected. The company planned to hold a news conference later Saturday.
Fonterra said in a press release that it identified a potential quality problem in March when a product tested positive for the bacteria Clostridium. The company said many strains of the bacteria are harmless, and product samples were put through intensive testing over the following months. It said that on July 31 it discovered a strain of the bacteria that can cause botulism.
The company said the problem involves three batches of whey protein concentrate produced at a single New Zealand manufacturing site in May 2012.
New Zealand's Ministry for Primary Industries said it was working with the company to investigate.
Fonterra Chief Executive Theo Spierings said in the press release that food safety was the company's top priority.
"We are acting quickly," he said. "Our focus is to get information out about potentially affected product as fast as possible so that it can be taken off supermarket shelves and, where it has already been purchased, can be returned."
Rabobank's 2012 Global Dairy Top 20 report ranked Fonterra as the world's fourth-largest dairy company by revenue behind Nestl�, Danone and Lactalis. The company is a cooperative, partially owned by thousands of farmers.
In 2011 the company collected 15.4 billion liters (4.1 billion gallons) of milk in New Zealand, representing about 90 percent of the country's total.


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Toronto Maple Leafs fans may not have seen a whole lot of Troy Bodie this season, but he's no stranger to the NHL, and probably more familiar with Randy Carlyle as a coach than most of the Leafs' current roster.
The 2003 Edmonton Oilers draft pick is a four year NHL veteran who has suited up for 121 games between the Anaheim Ducks (where he played 57 games in three seasons under Carlyle), Carolina Hurricanes, and now the Toronto Maple Leafs. Over those four seasons, he has amassed seven goals, seven assists, fourteen points, and 156 PIM. He's been a pro for twice as long though, logging 368 games in the minors with eight different teams since 2006-07. He also played four seasons with my hometown Kelowna Rockets of the WHL, where he won the Memorial Cup with the team in 2004.
Though Leafs fans may remember him best from episodes two and three of the HBO 24/7 Red Wings/Maple Leafs: Road to the Winter Classic series (Bodie put up 1 goal, 2 assists, 3 fights and 15 PIM in that time), he's now primarily playing with the Leafs' AHL affiliate Toronto Marlies. So far, the 6'4" winger has appeared in 16 games, scored 4 goals, 4 assists, and registered 9 PIM. His reassignment to the AHL cost him an appearance in the 2014 NHL Winter Classic, but he still got to play in an outdoor game, as the Marlies bested the Grand Rapids Griffins 4-3 outside at Comerica Park on December 30, 2013.
I caught up with Bodie recently during a Marlies' road swing to St. John's, Newfoundland, where the team was marooned and at the mercy of the polar vortex that had delayed the team's trip home to Toronto.
Playing in 14 Leafs games this season also means that you've missed more than 30 of their games. What factors go into Randy Carlyle giving you the call and putting you in the Leafs lineup or not from night to night?
Bodie: "I believe that one was strictly numbers. Colton Orr, who plays primarily the fourth line right wing, was down with an injury. That's the kind of role I play. It was nice to get the call and get up there, but it was strictly just to fill a role. He got healthy, and then I went back down."
Most opinions from players who have played or are playing for Randy seem to concur that he can be a tough coach. This is now the fourth season you've played under him, how is he to play for?
Bodie: "Randy and I actually get along fine. He's a tough coach. He expects a lot out of his players. At the same time, I think he's fair. If you work hard for him and play the systems, he likes you. But if you go astray and do your own thing he can be pretty rough on you."
During the 24/7 series, there was a scene at a Leafs practice where Randy pulls Mark Fraser and Paul Ranger aside and says, "…you're not playing tonight, you're not giving us what we need…if you're going to play with our hockey club, your level of play has to go up." Did you get a talk like that from Randy when you were reassigned, or how did your exit interview go?
Bodie: "Randy doesn't do a whole lot of that on his own. He doesn't talk to guys really, he kind of stays to his own. The one that actually told me was assistant GM Claude Loiselle. It's usually just, 'hey you know we liked your game… it's a numbers game… go down to the minors and do your thing.' That's usually about it."
How hard is it being a guy on the bubble? You're good enough to play in the NHL, but have struggled to stay there. Obviously you're a team guy, but to be the one who gets to play in a call-up scenario over others, it seems like you'd almost secretly have to root for guys to get hurt, or something. Can you describe what that situation is like?
Bodie: "You definitely want to be there. I wouldn't say you secretly hope for injuries or anything like that, that's bad karma. But you definitely pay attention to that kind of thing. Playing in the minors and being a bubble guy, you want to get up there and you obviously think about it quite a bit, but it's something where you just worry about your game, play hard, and let the chips fall where they may kind of thing."
In your opinion, is there more value from an ice-time and development standpoint to be playing in the minors regularly where you've played 16 games this year – and there may not be considering you've played more than 300 AHL games already — or is there more value for you to be practicing with the big club regularly but only playing sporadically?
Bodie: "I think there's definitely value to both. Being up in the NHL with the big players, going through those practices, having the expert level coaching and being treated completely first class is very valuable. But if you're not playing up there, it's good for a guy like myself to continue playing by coming down to the minors and getting good minutes, getting the work in and being ready for when they do need you up."
What are those little differences between the NHL and AHL that make them such different worlds? You mentioned the Leafs being first class, and I imagine the Marlies are top notch too.
Bodie: "In most organizations, the AHL and NHL are very different. In Toronto, we get treated very well in the minor leagues, so it's tough to complain about much at all. The subtle differences are definitely the travel – in the minor leagues, you travel a lot by bus. In the NHL you really get anything you need. There are meals at every point you would need a meal. There's always someone available, even if you need a Band-Aid, or an ice bag, or something like that. In the minor leagues, it's a little more limited. Those little differences are big when you need them."
Is there a level of frustration that comes with repeatedly getting called up and sent down, as you have over the last five seasons, rather than sticking?
Bodie: "Yeah, there's definitely a level of frustration. You want to be a full-time player in the NHL. That's your goal ever since you were a kid. So achieving your goal of getting to the NHL and then being sent down to the minors without any sort of timetable, then getting called up and everything's good again, and then sent back down – it gets very frustrating, but it is what it is. It's all part of being professional, I guess."
How is it playing in the "centre of the hockey universe", especially after playing in markets like Anaheim and Carolina? The scrutiny that comes with playing under that kind of microscope has proved to be too much for some players. How do you handle it, and how much pressure do you feel to be successful in Toronto and win the team's first Stanley Cup in nearly 50 years?
Bodie: "Yeah, it is very different. In Carolina and Anaheim, you're very under the radar. You're not bothered at all if you go out somewhere or anything like that. People don't give you the third degree about "…that turnover in the third period…" kind of thing. But in Toronto, that happens. It's tough at times to get away from the game and just relax, but that's more of something for the bigger time players like the Phaneufs and the Kessels of the world than the players like myself and the Marlies guys."
So far this season, you appeared in 14 games with the Leafs, scored one goal and two assists, had three fights and 15 PIM. With the Marlies, you've played 16 games, have four goals and four assists, and nine PIM. You have 121 career NHL games played, seven goals, seven assists, 14 total points, and 156 PIM. With your penalty minutes outweighing your point totals as much as they do, is it fair to classify you as a fighter?
Bodie: "I don't think a lot of players anymore really classify themselves as fighters. That's something that doesn't happen as much anymore, because in this day and age in the game you have to be able to play in order to get out there. There aren't many guys that cannot play the game. Fighting is something I definitely think is part of my game and will be for the rest of my career, but I definitely wouldn't consider myself a fighter. I think if you do that, you limit yourself."
What do you think of the scrutiny that has been placed on fighters and fighting in hockey recently with respect to their relationship to concussions?
Bodie: "It's a tough topic for the average fan, or mom or dad to really comment on because they don't play the game. Fighting is very much a part of the game. It's a way for the players to police themselves. People say things like injuries result from fighting… well of course they do. But if there wasn't fighting, we all believe there would be more injuries from players taking liberties, knowing that there wasn't that level of policing going on."
Is it fair to assume that, if fighting were removed, some players may never get their break in the NHL? That doesn't necessarily just mean the fighters, it could be guys who will just fight when they need to, and do whatever it takes to get into the lineup from night to night. What kind of players would we see getting their break into the league instead of guys who fight if that part of the game were taken out?
Bodie: "If that part of the game was taken out I think you'd find a more skilled fourth line. I think you'd see maybe more younger players getting their shot up there, in and out of the lineup. Maybe they'd call a young guy up for some experience in a spot that otherwise might have been held onto by a guy with more of a fighting role. I think the young guys might get a little more opportunity, but it's tough to really say."
What would happen to you and your game if fighting were to be removed from hockey? What elements of your game would you change to make sure you kept getting those call-ups?
Bodie: "I don't think there would be much that I would personally change. As a player, you always want to get better. I work on my game. Every day I'm on the ice. But I don't think there's anything I would change. I'd more or less just hope the rest of my game would be adequate."
You got called up to play with the Leafs during an interesting time, with the HBO 24/7 series being filmed and all, and you coming into their lineup on Dec 14th. You debuted in episode two, with the narrator mentioning you were filling in for David Clarkson. You fought twice that night, and we saw you get four stitches and return to action. Episode three saw you score your first NHL goal of the season in a win over Phoenix to open the show. Talk about that experience – how was it having the camera crews behind the scenes with you?
Bodie: "The HBO stuff was kind of cool. I thought maybe it'd be a bit of a nuisance with them around and being in your face and stuff. Like I said earlier, I think it was geared more towards the big time players — the Phaneufs, the Kessels, they got it the worst. But they were all good guys and they were respectful. It was a good experience having them around."
With so many guys on the roster, they surely couldn't feature everyone on camera, but you got significantly more screen time than a lot of your teammates. How did it play out that you got the TV time that you did?
Bodie: "I don't know, just dumb luck I guess. Obviously it's a TV show, so they're looking for some sort of excitement. In the second or third game I got in two scraps, and they got some good footage of me getting stitches. That was maybe something they were looking for. It wasn't something I was prepared for, but it is what it is."
When you play in the NHL you have cameras on you all the time anyway, but is there any additional pressure in having a show like that present as well? Did it change the dynamic in the dressing room, or anything else?
Bodie: "There were times when you didn't really notice them, I'd say. They kind of just sat in the middle of the room with the camera on. You saw them there obviously, and the camera moving, and the microphone around, but it wasn't something that was overbearing or annoying. Like I said, I thought they were respectful in our space, so it was good."
Did they have microphones on every guy all the time, or how did they pick up everything? Was it bothersome at all to skate with a microphone on?
Bodie: "For games and practices they'd pick a few guys and put a microphone on them. I had it once, and I didn't even notice it for the game I had it on. You don't think twice about it. You maybe mind your p's and q's a little more, but you don't really notice it."
Did you watch the show? What did you think of it?
Bodie: "I saw a little bit of it, yeah. Not all of it. I saw the little parts that I was in, but I didn't get a chance to watch the whole thing. The parts I did see, I thought they did a great job. We were represented well. I thought it was good."
You didn't get to play outdoors at the Big House in Ann Arbor at the Winter Classic as you were returned to the Marlies on Dec 23rd, but you did appear in the Marlies outdoor game against Grand Rapids at Comerica Park in Detroit instead. How was that experience? How different is the outdoor game compared to a regular indoor game? Did you take time to enjoy it, or did you and the team just focus on getting the win?
Bodie: "It was an outdoor game, so it was pretty cool. I'd never played in one of those. I thought it was really neat how they did it. You definitely are thinking about the conditions, the cold, and whatnot, but it wasn't that cold. Once you got into the heat of the game after the first few shifts it was just like another game. To win that game was more special than anything, but it was a good experience all around."
In your opinion, what will it take for you to get back on the Leafs roster this season and tally 50 or more NHL games again like you did in 2010-11? Have they given you any indication of what it will take for you to play more games with them this year?
Bodie: "No, they don't really communicate like that. You're more or less left on your own to play hard and do your thing. You're expected to know what you have to do to get up. Other than that, they don't say a whole lot."
Have you had a chance to follow your WHL alma mater Kelowna Rockets this year? They're ranked #1 in the CHL for the time being.
Bodie: "I haven't kept the greatest tabs, but I knew they were doing well this year. I saw Bruce Hamilton earlier this year, in Toronto actually, and he spoke very highly of them – which was unusual because usually he just complains and complains. But he had good things to say about them, and I'm excited to see them go farther and hopefully bring home another championship."
Just to have a little fun, how often does Dion Phaneuf wear bowties to games, and how many more games would you have to play to have enough clout in the room to change the post win song to something other than a Miley Cyrus song?
Bodie: "To answer question number one, too often maybe. To answer the second one, I don't worry about the music at all but that's usually how it happens, you play some dumb win song and just go with it. It's associated with good things, so you like it, right?"


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Pages: 1
Is there a way to change the titlebar height?
The Window Mgr offers to change the font and size, but it does not change the height of the bar or the buttons (close, hide, maximize, etc.).
I tried fonts size like 24 pt but it ends up bleeding over the edges. Is there anything I can add to the theme rc files?
I'm using Xfce 4.6 Final.
Hi budman,
I think it depends on the font size and on the size of the background image. Maybe you can check /usr/share/themes.
The title bar itself is dependent on the theme used and it is independent of XFCE. The setting you are looking for, should be in your Linux distribution desktop settings.
Xubuntu 9.10
xfce's DPI settings change everything except title bar height.
from usr/share/themes:
style "frame_title" {
fg[NORMAL] = lighter (@fg_color)
Would really like this bug fixed. Are any temporary hax/ theme edits possible?
The window manager (xfwm4) takes care of the title bar it is a set of pixmaps so the font size and/or gtk settings are irrelevant if you want a larger title bar you must use a different theme or tweak one your self, have a look in say /usr/share/themes/Crux/xfwm4 to see the general layout of the titlebar.
Pages: 1


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LINCOLN, Mass. Sara Lewis is fluent in firefly. On this night she walks through a farm field in eastern Massachusetts, watching the first fireflies of the evening rise into the air and begin to blink on and off. Dr. Lewis, an evolutionary ecologist at Tufts University, points out six species in this meadow, each with its own pattern of flashes.
Along one edge of the meadow are Photinus greeni, with double pulses separated by three seconds of darkness. Near a stream are Photinus ignitus, with a five-second delay between single pulses. And near a forest are Pyractomena angulata, which make Dr. Lewis's favorite flash pattern. "It's like a flickering orange rain," she said.
The fireflies flashing in the air are all males. Down in the grass, Dr. Lewis points out, females are sitting and observing. They look for flash patterns of males of their own species, and sometimes they respond with a single flash of their own, always at a precise interval after the male's. Dr. Lewis takes out a penlight and clicks it twice, in perfect Photinus greeni. A female Photinus greeni flashes back.
"Most people don't realize there's this call and response going on," Dr. Lewis said. "But it's very, very easy to talk to fireflies."
For Dr. Lewis, this meadow is the stage for an invertebrate melodrama, full of passion and yearning, of courtship duets and competitions for affection, of cruel deception and gruesome death. For the past 16 years, Dr. Lewis has been coming to this field to decipher the evolutionary forces at play in this production, as fireflies have struggled to survive and spread their genes to the next generation.
It was on a night much like this one in 1980 when Dr. Lewis first came under the spell of fireflies. She was in graduate school at Duke University, studying coral reef fish. Waiting for a grant to come through for a trip to Belize, she did not have much else to do but sit in her backyard in North Carolina.
"Every evening there was this incredible display of fireflies," Dr. Lewis said. She eventually started to explore the yard, inspecting the males and females. "What really struck me was that in this one-acre area there were hundreds of males and I could only find two or three females," she said. "I thought, 'Man, this is so intense.' "
When a lot of males are competing for the chance to mate with females, a species experiences a special kind of evolution. If males have certain traits that make them attractive to females, they will mate more than other males. And that preference may mean that those attractive males can pass down their traits to the next generation. Over thousands of generations, the entire species may be transformed.
Charles Darwin described this process, which he called sexual selection, in 1871, using male displays of antlers and feathers as examples. He did not mention fireflies. In fact, fireflies remained fairly mysterious for another century. It was not until the 1960s that James Lloyd, a University of Florida biologist, deciphered the call and response of several species of North American firefly.
Dr. Lewis, realizing that other firefly mysteries remained to be solved, switched to fireflies from fish in 1984, when she became a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard. She taught herself Dr. Lloyd's firefly code and then began to investigate firefly mating habits. North American fireflies spend two years underground as larvae, then spend the final two weeks of their lives as adults, flashing, mating and laying eggs. When Dr. Lewis started studying fireflies, scientists could not say whether the females mated once and then laid all their eggs, or mated with many males. "Nobody knew what happened after the lights went out," Dr. Lewis said.
She searched for mating fireflies in the evening, marked their locations with surveyor's flags and then revisited them every half-hour through the night. They were still mating at dawn.
"It was cool to watch the sun rise and see the couples breaking up and the females crawling down the grass to lay their eggs," Dr. Lewis said.
Many Americans are familiar with the kinds of fireflies Dr. Lewis studies, but they represent only a tiny fraction of the 2,000 species worldwide. And there is enormous variation in these insects. "There are some species that produce flashes when they're adults, and there are some that simply glow as adults," Dr. Lewis said. "Then there are a whole bunch of species where the adults don't produce any light at all."
In recent years scientists have analyzed the DNA of fireflies to figure out how their light has evolved. The common ancestor of today's fireflies probably produced light only when they were larvae. All firefly larvae still glow today, as a warning to would-be predators. The larvae produce bitter chemicals that make them an unpleasant meal.
As adults, the earliest fireflies probably communicated with chemical signals, the way some firefly species do today. Only much later did some firefly species gain through evolution the ability to make light as adults. Instead of a warning, the light became a mating call. (An enzyme in the firefly's tail drives a chemical reaction that makes light.)
The more Dr. Lewis watched firefly courtship, the clearer it became that the females were carefully choosing mates. They start dialogues with up to 10 males in a single evening and can keep several conversations going at once. But a female mates with only one male, typically the one she has responded to the most.
Dr. Lewis wondered if the female fireflies were picking their mates based on variations in the flashes of the males. To test that possibility, she took female fireflies to her lab, where she has computer-controlled light systems that can mimic firefly flashes. "You can play back specific signals to females and see what they respond to," Dr. Lewis said.
The female fireflies turned out to be remarkably picky. In many cases, a male flash got no response at all. In some species, females preferred faster pulse rates. In others, the females preferred males that made long-lasting pulses.
If females preferred some flashes over others, Dr. Lewis wondered why those preferences had evolved in the first place. One possible explanation was that the signals gave female fireflies a valuable clue about the males. Somehow, mating with males with certain flash patterns allowed females to produce more offspring, which would inherit their preference.
It is possible that females use flashes to figure out which males can offer the best gifts. In many invertebrate species, the males provide females with food to help nourish their eggs. Dr. Lewis and her colleagues discovered that fireflies also made these so-called nuptial gifts packages of protein they inject with their sperm.
Dr. Lewis is not sure why she and her colleagues were the first to find them. The gifts form coils that can take up a lot of space in a male firefly's abdomen. "They're incredibly beautiful," she said.
Receiving nuptial gifts, Dr. Lewis and her colleagues have shown, can make a huge difference in the reproductive success of a female firefly. "It just about doubles the number of eggs a female can lay in her lifetime," she said. One reason the effect is so big is that fireflies do not eat during their two-week adulthood. A slowly starving female can use a nuptial gift to build more eggs.
In at least some species, females may use flashes to pick out males with the biggest gifts. Dr. Lewis has tested this hypothesis in two species; in one, males with conspicuous flashes have bigger gifts. In another species, she found no link.
"In some cases they could be honest signals, and in some cases they could be deceptive signals," Dr. Lewis said.
Deception may, in fact, evolve very easily among fireflies. It turns out that a male firefly does not need to burn many extra calories to make flashes. "It takes some energy, but it's tiny. It's less costly for a male than flying around," Dr. Lewis said.
If making light is so cheap for males, it seems odd that they have not all evolved to be more attractive to females. "What is it that keeps their flashes from getting longer and longer or faster and faster?" Dr. Lewis asked.
Scanning the meadow, she grabbed her insect net and ran after a fast-flying firefly with a triple flash. She caught an animal that may offer the answer to her question. Dr. Lewis dropped the insect into a tube and switched on a headlamp to show her catch. Called Photuris, it is a firefly that eats other fireflies.
"They are really nasty predators," Dr. Lewis said. Photuris fireflies sometimes stage aerial assaults, picking out other species by their flashes and swooping down to attack. In other cases, they sit on a blade of grass, responding to male fireflies with deceptive flashes. When the males approach, Photuris grabs them.
"They pounce, they bite, they suck blood all the gory stuff," Dr. Lewis said. She has found that each Photuris can eat several fireflies in a night. Photuris kills other fireflies only to retrieve bad-tasting chemicals from their bodies, which it uses to protect itself from predators.
To study how Photuris predation affects its firefly prey, Dr. Lewis and her colleagues built sticky traps equipped with lights that mimicked courtship signals of Photuris's victims. The scientists found that Photuris was more likely to attack when flash rates were faster. In other words, conspicuous flashes the ones females prefer also make males more likely to be killed.
"At least where Photuris predators are around," Dr. Lewis said, "there's going to be a strong selection for less conspicuous flashes."


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Dark Horse Comics to Publish Art of Portal 2!
APRIL 2, SEATTLE, WA– Straight from Dark Horse Comics' video-game panel at Emerald City Comicon, Dark Horse announced the brand-new art book for Valve'sPortal 2!
The Guardian said it was "an astonishing experience." GameSpy called it "a near-perfect example of what can happen when all of the elements of modern game design are combined to create a beautifully cohesive whole."
Now, Valve and Dark Horse pull back the curtain to give you a backstage tour of one of the most innovative video games of the decade! The Art of Portal 2 walks you through the visual evolution of the award-winning game, from concept to completion, with never-before-seen concept art and insights from the writers and artists behind the Portal series.
The sequel to 2007's Game of the Year, Portal 2 is a hilariously mind-bending adventure that challenges you to use wits over weaponry in a fun house of diabolical science. More than four million copies of the Portal 2 game have sold worldwide.
The Art of Portal 2 offers incredible visuals of the Aperture Science facility and the creation of Chell and the rest of the cast, and features 184 pages of mostly never-before-seen art and a look into the design process of the legendary game studio.
Praise for Portal 2:
"Portal 2 is a novel, unforgettable experience."—IGN.com
The Art of Portal 2 is on sale October 31, 2012!
For additional information, check out Kotaku!
About Dark Horse Comics
Since 1986, Dark Horse Comics has proven to be a solid example of how integrity and innovation can help broaden a unique storytelling medium and establish a small, homegrown company as an industry giant. The company is known for the progressive and creator-friendly atmosphere it provides for writers and artists. In addition to publishing comics from top talent like Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, Neil Gaiman, Gerard Way, Will Eisner, and best-selling prose author Janet Evanovich, Dark Horse has developed such successful characters as the Mask, Timecop, and the Occultist. Additionally, its highly successful line of comics and products based on popular properties includes Star Wars, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Aliens, Conan the Barbarian, Mass Effect, Serenity, and Domo. Today, Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent comic-book publisher in the United States and is recognized as both an innovator in the cause of creator rights and the comics industry's leading publisher of licensed material.


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HROM Homepage
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One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of
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conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as
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1. Why do I need to setup an account?
Creating an account will allow you to check the status of your order, print a receipt and track your package. You can also use your account to save your personal information to make future purchases more convenient.
2. Are your prices listed in US dollars?
Yes, all of our prices are listed in US dollars. The billing for your order will also be in US dollars even if you place an international order. Please review your order carefully before submitting it for processing.
3. Will sales tax be applied to my order?
Sales tax is only applied to orders shipped to Louisiana. Please note that state and applicable local taxes will be applied to all orders shipped to Louisiana addresses.
4. What forms of payment do you accept?
We accept all major credit cards including Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.
5. How are you able to offer these products at such low prices?
We purchase all of our stock in large quantities to receive the best prices available, and we are able to pass the savings on to you.
6. The item that I would like to purchase is out of stock. Can I order it anyway?
If you order an item that is out of stock, you will receive an email notifying you that the item is out of stock and stating when the item is expected to be in stock.
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Your receipt can be printed or saved to your computer at the end of the check out process. A copy of your receipt will also be included in your confirmation email. You can print or save additional copies of your order receipt at any time by logging into your account.
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Once we receive your completed order, an email confirming your order will be sent to the email address that you provided during checkout.
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If you have not received a confirmation email within 24 hours of placing your order, check your junk mail folder to see if our email was picked up by your filter or contact us through Live Help or our customer service line for assistance.
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Your can check the status of your order at anytime by clicking on the My Account tab. Log using your email address and the password that you created during checkout.
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You can cancel your order by logging into your account, by calling our customer service line or through Live Help.
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We offer free ground shipping for all orders totaling $70 or more. Shipping rates for orders totaling less than $70 are determined by package weight and delivery designation.
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All orders are processed and shipped within 1 business day. Please note that orders placed on holidays or weekends will be processed on the following business day.
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Construction for the Old Lackawanna Trail (Route 1018) bridge, spanning Beaver Creek in New Milford Township, Susquehanna County, is scheduled to begin as part of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's (PennDOT) Rapid Bridge Replacement Project. Replacement of this bridge will allow PennDOT to remove it from Susquehanna County's structurally deficient bridge list.
Construction is expected to begin during the week of June 19 and be complete in late August. During this time, drivers will be directed to follow a detour along Old Route 11(Main Street), Church Street (Route 1033) and Steam Hollow Road (Route 1037).
In the event of unfavorable weather or unforeseen activities, this schedule may change.
This bridge is referred to as JV-152 and is one out of the 558 bridges being replaced under the Rapid Bridge Replacement Project. JV references the joint-venture partnership between Walsh/Granite, which is leading construction for the entire project.
Media contact: Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners: Rory McGlasson, 484-408-0284.
Contact: Andrew Dressler, 312.756.9119
Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners believes in engaging local community and disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) resources to benefit our projects and the communities in which we do business. We seek to establish relationships with local DBE firms, encourage and assist potential DBEs to obtain necessary certification and prequalification, and aid development of DBEs through their active involvement.
View Available Jobs An Equal Opportunity Employer, Disability/Veteran.
Copyright © 2019 Plenary Group | Walsh Group | Granite | HDR. All rights reserved.


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The National Writers Union – Twin Cities is a local chapter of the National Writers Union, the only union dedicated to freelance writers. We work to advance the economic, social, and political status of writers across the nation.
NWU–Twin Cities represents NWU members in the Minneapolis - St. Paul region, and Minnesota in general.
Join our national organization to participate in our local advocacy and educational activities and network with writers across the nation.
National Writers Union – Twin Cities is a chapter of National Writers Union UAW Local 1981. Find more chapter listings at NWU.org.


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Hempstead board OKs redistricting-help contract
The Hempstead Town Board has approved a $5,000 contract for a private firm to help with the town's coming redistricting process -- the first step of a procedure that will set voting districts for America's largest township for the next decade.
The town board voted, 4-0, Tuesday on the contract with Schenectady-based Skyline Demographic Consultants Inc., charged with analyzing population data that will be used by the town attorney's office in redrawing the six-district map. The Republican-controlled board would then vote on the new map, but residents, Democratic and civic leaders at the board meeting called for the panel to create a bipartisan redistricting commission.
"Not only should Republicans, Democrats and all the political parties have access to the process, but groups concerned with fairness and good government should all be included and participate," said Bob Young, first deputy leader of the town Democratic Committee.
District maps are redrawn every 10 years as required by law, to account for demographic changes. The town's population of nearly 760,000 grew by 0.5 percent from 2000 to 2010.
Young also called for a commission that would hold public hearings in each district about the proposed map. Supervisor Kate Murray said the board has not determined if it will have more than one redistricting hearing, scheduled for March 19.
"I am concerned residents of the town won't see the process as it happens," said Michael Turi, 35, of Woodmere, a registered Democrat who supports the idea of a commission.
Skyline served as a consultant for the Republican members of the Nassau County's Temporary Districting Advisory Commission. The Republican-controlled county legislature is expected to approve a GOP-drawn map for new legislative districts on Monday, despite criticism it will split minority and other communities.
"It seems to me this $5,000 is relatively small considering how much they charged Nassau County," said Claudia Borecky, president of the North and Central Merrick Civic Association. "I wonder how this deal was made."
Murray said in response, "This is a separate government; we don't share contracts." She added the town's 2003 redistricting process was "successful."
Town Attorney Joseph Ra said his office chose Skyline because the consulting firm was qualified. He said the professional service contract was not required to be put out for bids.
Ra also addressed concerns that Councilwoman Dorothy Goosby, the only Democrat and the first African-American woman on the town board, was absent from the board meeting. Goosby is at an upstate conference of the Association of Towns of the State of New York.
"Councilwoman Goosby is on top of this process from A to Z," Ra said.


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Science fiction - science fact
Whether it's Star Trek's USS Enterprise, or the iconic space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey, science fiction has always provided inspiration and ideas for the scientists and engineers that design and build real spacecraft.
The video compares factual and fictional space stations, manned spacecrafts and explains how 'sci-fi' interplanetary travels could inspire future generation of scientists and engineers.
|Download hi-res movie here
|Available version:
|Quicktime file
|61 173 Kb
|6:23 mins
|December 2008
Please also take time to complete and return the on-line evaluation form when you have finished viewing each Space-in-Bytes. Your feedback is important to us. We thank you in advance for your time and support!


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At Eurogamer Expo, the creative director for Rage confirmed that the game will release on three discs for the Xbox 360, and for PS3 owners, require an 8 GB install.
The three-disc release wasn't exactly a surprise. At QuakeCon, Joel reported that the game would require 21 to 22 GB of hard drive space if you installed it to your 360. That hinted at a multidisc form for sure. The 8 GB installation on the PS3 had been rumored. id's Tim Willits confirmed it for Eurogamer's Digital Foundry, and complimented Sony for its help in managing the installation and permitting one of that size.
"Sony was great. Kudos to Sony for letting us do that," Willits said. "They don't allow every game to do that. So definitely, hats off. What we were able to do is install all the textures to the highest level."
Willits said that while id Software recommends installing the game to the hard drive on the 360, "you don't need to install all three discs. If you don't have the space available on your hard drive, don't stress. Install the first disc, the first chapter, the first half of the game, then when you're done, uninstall and install disc two."
Asked to explain what that meant, Willits said: "You can go back if you want to but there's really no reason to." Also: "You don't really need to install the multiplayer disc if you're really tight on hard disk space."
Rage: The Return of id Software [Eurogamer. h/t LulzJager]
You can contact Owen Good, the author of this post, at firstname.lastname@example.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.


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Is anyone interested in joining me at Bassingham to observe the Orionid meteor shower? Unfortunately, the best times are after midnight and it happens mid-week this year. Contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com.
The following has been copied from the SPA website - by Tony Markham, Meteor Section Director.
2015 Orionids
The best of the early/mid autumn meteor showers.
Main Activity Dates Oct 14 - 31
Peak Rates Oct 20 - 23
Peak ZHR 20 - 25
Best Observed Rates Late in the nights of Oct 21 - 23
Visibility each night (UK) Only after the radiant rises at ~ 21h UT
Moonlight issues at Maximum Only before midnight (First Quarter is on Oct 20)
The Orionid meteor shower arises from the Earth's pre-perihelion encounter with the meteor stream of comet 1P/Halley.
The Orionids usually produce good observed rates, especially in the later part of the night. Although some meteor shower listings give a start date in early October, Orionid rates remain very low until the third week of the month. There is no sharp maximum and good rates should be seen during Oct 20-23. The peak ZHR will probably be about 20 this year (the actual observed hourly rate will, of course, depend on the darkness of your observing site). Strong Orionid activity (ZHRs ~35-80) occurred in the years 2006-2010 inclusive, when such rates persisted for two or more nights at these levels. However, no repeat is expected this time, but surprises can occur. Orionid meteors are typically swift moving, with good persistent trains.
Bear in mind that the Orionid radiant doesn't rise until around 21h UT and so no Orionids will be seen before this time.
With the Moon having passed through First Quarter on Oct 20, observations before midnight will suffer some interference from moonlight (although the Moon will be in the western sky and the Orionid radiant will be in the eastern sky). However, observations in the later part of the night, when the Orionid radiant is high in the sky, will be in moon-free skies. As an example, during the night of Oct 21-22, the Moon will be near the Capricornus/Aquarius border and, for observers at the latitude of the UK, will set by around midnight local time.
The Orionid radiant is shown on the chart below - note that the radiant lies closer to Gemini than to the main pattern of Orion. For the best observed rates, choose an area of sky around 30 degrees from the radiant and at an altitude of around 50 degrees above the horizon.


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The Charles R. Drew Health Center is located on the campus of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in the Lida Brown building, directly behind Trigg Hall. The Health Center functions as a resource to help students achieve and maintain wellness, as
well as a treatment center for health problems within the student population. The Student Health Center provides health care to the student population that is convenient, affordable and accessible within a pleasant, professional atmosphere.
Health Services Information:
After HoursFor services after hours, students should seek care from the local hospital emergency room (Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, MD) or the nearby urgent care
facility in Princess Anne ( Urgent Care). Students should check the hours of operation and verify that their insurance is accepted at any urgent care facility before visiting. In life-threatening or serious medical situations,
911 should be utilized.
ConfidentialityInformation provided to the Student Health Center is strictly for use by the Health Center staff and will not be released to anyone without student knowledge and written
consent. The exceptions to this are cases of life-threatening illness or court subpoena.
EligibilityAll currently registered students who live on or off campus are eligible for services. Additional charges may be required for some services.
FeesSpecific services will incur a cost to the student. Payment is accepted from the HawkCard only.
Hours of operation have been adjusted beginning Fall, 2020 to enhance precautions against the spread of the novel coronavirus. Hours of operations are Monday - Friday, 8am-4:30pm. Walk-in hours are no longer available. The center will operate on an appointment only basis.
LocationThe Charles R. Drew Health Center is located in the Lida Brown building directly behind Trigg Hall.
Medical EmergenciesIn a life threatening situation on campus contact the Campus Police at (410) 651-6590 and notify the Resident Assistant or Area Director. If medical emergencies
occur while off-campus, contact 911 for an ambulance.
Medical Excuses
Required DocumentsStudents are required to submit health history and immunization proof upon entry to the university. Documentation of the following is required:
The deadline for submission of forms is August 1 for Fall semester and January 1 for Spring semester
Required ImmunizationsAll students, including graduate, transfer and international, who are registered as UMES students, regardless of number of credit hours are required to provide
a completed health history form and proof of up-to-date immunization status for measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) and tuberculosis (TB) prior to registering for and attending classes. Students living in campus housing must also meet the meningitis requirement.
Failure to submit your health and immunization form by the deadline will affect your access to scheduling. You may mail, fax or hand deliver the records (when delivering, be sure to give forms to Student Health Center staff) Please keep a copy of your
The following immunizations are required:
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