Pages From
The Coach’s Playbook

My ultimate goal is to write useful and relevant content about everything related to creating success and getting you to the next level.

Sometimes however, I do find myself just blogging about things that need to be talked about, so don’t be surprised by what you find popping up here. I always welcome all useful comments, suggestions and critiques. So come often, bring a friend, and stay as long as you’d like!

Tapping Into The Marketing Development Fund blog Jul 24, 2016

Have you ever wanted to put on a small event to showcase or show off your product or services but just don't have the budget? Then you should know about what is called the Marketing Development Fund or MDF for short. It is the term used for funds available from vendors and partners of products and s...

Continue Reading...
Help Desk, Service Desk or Call Center - Which Is It? blog Jul 15, 2016

Are you running a help desk, service desk or a call center? And do you know the difference? I find it odd that so many small companies try to run some version of a help desk as if they had infinite technical resources like a call center. They say, “We want a real person to answer the phone when the ...

Continue Reading...
Filtering the Noise blog Apr 27, 2016

You have to learn how to filter your world to stop the interrupts and in today’s business world that means everything from your phone, the people around you when you’re in an office, to the content that's stuffed into your face as you do your job. And now in the 21st century, it’s not just somebody ...

Continue Reading...
The Concept of the Timeshare Tech blog Feb 24, 2016

Having worked with so many service companies over the years I've seen and felt the pains of the roller coaster that is the tech workforce. The smaller your company is the more you feel it when someone even gets sick let alone has to part ways with the company. I say you should always know who the ne...

Continue Reading...
The Power of the Weekly Stand-up / Scrum Meeting blog Jan 28, 2016

One of my measures of the maturity of a service team is their ability to have a weekly stand-up meeting every Monday morning. Rain or shine, good or bad, fire and flames or all quit. By the way, I actually prefer the term Scrum as it is an Agile term and it really is more appropriate for how I think...

Continue Reading...
Ask The Coach - Ten Golden Rules of PSA Rule #8 blog Apr 28, 2015
Jeff asks...

In The Ten Golden Rules of PSA you indicate Rule #8 is – All work is scheduled in 3 days in advance.
I understand that if everything is a priority then nothing is, but How do you arrive at the "3" days?

Also, I assume the 3 days out is for field service only? We also provide a help des...

Continue Reading...
Bag And Tag Customer Service Issues blog Jan 20, 2015

Most small and medium-sized companies address customer service issues related to the mechanism we call Service Delivery as just part of the day-to-day ongoing workload and never really track it. The only tracking is the recent relevant memory of those involved. And if it was a particularly bad issue...

Continue Reading...
Five Important Things For All New Talent blog Sep 11, 2013

Stop me if you've heard this one…

I’m no longer surprised by the number of companies that end up with the wrong people working for them, and for a ridiculously long time at that, before it is remedied. What else would you expect if your behavior is to wait until the last minute to start looking for...

Continue Reading...
Always Have Box Seat Tickets On Hand blog Aug 12, 2013

About 25 years ago, I worked for a manufacturing company in Portland, Oregon. The owner had box seats for the Portland Trailblazers basketball team. It didn't take me long to figure out that some of the employees there would literally throw down for a chance to get that week’s tickets. Of greater va...

Continue Reading...
The Power of The Widget blog Aug 11, 2013

Time is your Widget!

If you're in the service industry in pretty much any fashion, Time is your widget. It's your pizza, shoe, car, chocolate bar, dress, lemon, nut. bolt, or screw. My personal stand on this is hard line and straightforward: If you fail to count and track your widgets, no matter wh...

Continue Reading...
Agile Service Delivery Defined blog Jul 07, 2013

Agile Service Delivery releases your service department from the constraints of conventional service delivery and allows your entire team to function with a level of autonomy far superior to those still preached by your PSA solution providers. I have been using the term Agile Service Delivery for ye...

Continue Reading...
Who Are The Next Five People You Will Hire? blog Feb 11, 2013

If you’re in IT, then you’re in a fast-paced industry that has high demands for being dynamic. And dynamic means knowing who the next five people you will be hiring are well in advance. It should be an integral part of your People Process to continually be searching for new, awesome talent, and not ...

Continue Reading...