Don't let the tire-kickers leave without a commitment

 I wrote this column many years ago. I think it still offers a lot of value for businesses trying to close a sale.

At a ramshackle roadside tourist market on the north coast of Jamaica, if you stop to investigate the goods in one stall, the high-spirited vendors who eke out a living there insist you visit them all. I managed to escape on one recent trip by saying I had a bus to catch (which was true), and that I would return the next day (which was sort of possibly true).

But I was humbled by one young vendor who implored me to visit her stall. When I said I had to go, she responded, “But you said you’d come back tomorrow. You’ll come back, right?” I assured her I would. And I did, because her earnest questioning had transformed my feeble excuse into a solemn commitment.

That brilliant marketing tactic made me wonder how many Canadian entrepreneurs are as adept as that souvenir seller at winning commitments from potential prospects. What do you do to elevate your relationship with the “just browsing” crowd, or to increase your chance of landing a sale tomorrow that you didn't make today?

This is one task that’s more easily accomplished online than IRL (“in real life,” for those who didn't know that reality is now just an acronym). If someone has visited your website, but is about to slip away without leaving their name, you can easily generate an automated “Going so soon?” screen that offers casual visitors an additional benefit (a brochure, newsletter, white paper or “special report”) if they provide their name and email address. That gives you one more shot at demonstrating the value you create, or adding the prospect to your mailing list.

Some online marketers structure that “last chance” offer as a survey, giving them a chance to learn more about the prospect, or to obtain feedback on their site or product offerings. I believe most businesses should try even harder when playing this game. Why not offer a free sample or coupon to anyone who leaves their contact points on your site, or give them a chance to enter a contest and win a prize?

Business, after all, is more than a succession of rational transactions. To build robust customer relationships, you need showmanship and community. Just because your competitors don't use fun, style or surprise as a business tool is no reason you shouldn't. Selling is about differentiation, not conformity.

Back in real life, wringing commitment from tire-kickers has to be a more personal, creative act. You and your employees have to be trained to carefully manage potential purchasers. But how often do they get away anyway?

Just last week, a friend and I met for drinks. Feeling peckish, he asked for a menu. When the server returned to take his order, he said he had changed his mind – nothing on the menu interested him. A well-coached server would have said, “What do you feel like? Maybe we can help you out.” (Our server ambled back to the kitchen.)

Therein lies the secret of winning over reluctant customers: create a dialogue. Not in a “what-can-I-do-to-sell-you-this-car-today?” kind of way, but a genuine conversation aimed at solving the prospect’s problems rather than filling your weekly quota.

At the souvenir market in Jamaica, the attendants, like sales people everywhere, asked what I was looking for. That’s the wrong question. (I had no idea. Does anyone go shopping with the intention of buying island-shaped key chains?) They should have asked more focused questions such as “Who are you buying for?,” or, “What have you seen already that you liked? Maybe I can help you find something better.”

If a prospect just won't buy today, don't let them get away. Tell them about your next upcoming sale (or other event), or ask for their contacts so you can notify them of your next product launch. Maybe, just maybe, you could let them take a sample product home if they promise to come back tomorrow. If you are running out of ideas and your prospect is in a hurry, ask for permission to call them back tomorrow with a custom solution.

Better still, develop specific tools for engaging the indecisive. A no-questions-asked returns policy may ease some buyers’ fears. Handing out a binder filled with positive testimonials from satisfied customers will reassure others. For cost-conscious clients, have a strategy ready to bring down the cost of ownership: a “value-priced” line of comparable products, flexible financing, or escalating discounts for multiple purchases.

Your employees may have additional solutions to offer. Why not hold a contest to see who can submit the best ideas for converting prospects into buyers? That can help build the can-do culture you want.

A successful business owner once told me about a customer who asked for a certain product that the business had never actually handled before. “What did you tell him?” I asked. “I’m an entrepreneur,” he said. “The answer is always yes.”

 

 

At Toronto Climate Week, experts call out Canada’s climate complacency

(This is a summary of a story that you can read (for free) at Corporate Knights.)

My latest story for Corporate Knights covers yesterday's kickoff event for Toronto Climate Week.

When will Canada stop dawdling, stop kneeling to the oil companies, and actually engage with climate change?

Climate tech will be the biggest boom of the century. And Canada is still propping up oil and gas.

Here are the first four paragraphs of my story. Follow the link to read the rest.

(It gets better as it goes along.)

The  second annual Toronto Climate Week kicked off yesterday with an eight-hour conference on “the Canadian climate advantage.” Intended as a city-wide community-building event to inspire new collaboration on climate solutions, the opening-day talkfest arguably served more to expose the ironies and contradictions in the Canadian climate fight.

In her keynote speech at the flagship event, Diana Fox Carney called climate change “the biggest challenge of our lifetime” and said the movement’s task is to convince people “that a more climate-friendly future is not only possible, it’s the one everyone wants” – safer, more inclusive and more just. But subsequent speakers charged that Canada is backsliding on climate performance, weakening standards and putting its own zero-emission targets beyond reach.

Fox Carney is a well-known economist, policy expert and adviser on climate issues to global investors – and her husband is Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has faced criticism from environmental groups on his climate agenda thus far. The former central banker has been a powerful proponent of sustainable finance, but his response to growing global protectionism has been, in part, to unleash Canada’s fossil-fuel industries, roll back emissions caps and support new pipelines.

In her opening remarks, Fox Carney did note that economic concerns such as “security and affordability” have been edging out climate concerns. Nonetheless, she added, “we need a shared sense of purpose around these issues.” Climate champions need to act fast, she said, and offer “solutions that are affordable, practical and able to improve people’s lives now.”

Read the rest here.

Bonus! My favourite slide of the day. From Joannah Lawson, a principal with Climate Week platinum sponsor The Brian + Joannah Lawson Family Foundation.

 

Customer service matters. Does it matter to you?

“Customer service is reactive — it’s what happens when something goes wrong. Customer experience is proactive — it’s every interaction, every touchpoint, every moment between a brand and a customer that shapes their perception and their loyalty.”

Everyone complains about customer service – but entrepreneurs and CEOs rarely focus on it. As Jeannie Walters, author of Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations, points out in a recent article, “many leaders think customer experience is someone else’s job.”

In “The leadership blind spot that’s quietly killing revenue,” Walters notes that companies prioritizing proactive customer experience achieve 41% faster revenue growth and 51% better customer retention. “Those aren’t customer service metrics,” she writes. “They’re business outcomes, directly tied to leadership decisions at the top.”

Walters says business leaders who consistently drive strong customer experiences share three behaviours:

1. They define what success looks like for the customer, not just the organization. “When both sets of goals are visible, decisions vastly improve.”
2. They make the customer’s voice a leadership-level input. Customer feedback rarely reaches the leadership table. “Leaders who build direct lines to customer insight make faster, more informed decisions.”
3. They treat consistency as a competitive advantage. “Customers form their perceptions from patterns, not individual moments. Leaders who establish clear standards for every touchpoint create the conditions for trust to accumulate over time.”

Read more at “The leadership blind spot that’s quietly killing revenue.”

Read more about Jeannie Walters’ work.

What you need to know about raising funds for your business

When you're just starting out in your own business, the venture-funding scene can be quite confusing. So many sources of capital -- but who are they, and when should you hit them up?

Eric Partaker, a CEO, coach and business writer, has produced a handy chart to help you understand the roles and functions of different funding partners.

This is pretty much commodity information, but Eric has summarized it very well. And he's helpfully added "red flags" to watch for at each level.  

Keep in mind that only 1% of startups will ever qualify for professional funding. And that every percent you give away early on could cost you BIG in the event of a successful exit.

Angels can be amazing first funding partners -- they're usually experienced entrepreneurs with lots of useful advice. But the longer you can grow your business with your own team and your own funds before you call for help, the less equity you will generally have to give up. 

One other caveat: Some entrepreneurs go looking for venture capital too soon -- when they clearly sh0uld be starting with risk-taking angels. The VCs will judge you for that, and remember. So make sure you understand this chart before you start dialing for dollars.

You can learn more about Eric Partaker's work, and the events he runs, at https://ericpartaker.com/the-ceo-accelerator.

"Listening isn’t a soft skill. It’s a competitive advantage.”

How do you build trust as a leader AND create a platform for ongoing innvation?

Through "reverse mentorship” - in which leaders actively seek feedback and advice from juniors in their organization. 

Canadian Business writer Sara Horowitz explores the possibilities in this Feb. 2026 article about Max Schramm, CEO of Calgary-based Lufthansa Technik Canada. 

"Each week, he sets aside time for reverse mentorship—a practice that flips the traditional mentorship model by having junior employees share their ideas and experiences with senior staff, creating a more holistic feedback loop and helping leaders like him make decisions that reflect a wider range of perspectives."

We all know that CEOs often feel constrained about opening up too much to team members of all ages and backgrounds. But Schramm says it helps him identify new opportunities, and challenges his own assumptions, such as work-from-home policies and technology trends.

Feedback is a gift, says Schramm.

"What matters to me is that reverse mentorship isn’t just a program, but a practice. If you aren’t genuinely interested, it won’t reach its full potential.”

Read the full story here.

Changing Canada's "Supplier Mindset"

Wattpad cofounder Allen Lau, now a venture investor (and one of the most modest brilliant people you could ever meet), just posted a great article on LinkedIn. It's about Canada's fundamental need for better, stronger entrepreneurs - and our chronic "supplier's mindset."

Here are some snippets:

"Canada invented modern AI. And yet, the most important AI companies are almost all based in the US.

We lost Game 1. But losing Game 1 does not mean the series is over....

The root problem is not talent, capital, or policy. It is a mindset.

We have collectively learned to think like suppliers, not owners. The largest and most valuable companies are technology companies, almost all based in the US, many co-founded or led by Canadians.

We do not have an auto industry. We have an auto supplier industry — collectively worth a fraction of the companies that own the customer relationship and set the rules. We signed EV deals to become suppliers again, taxpayer-subsidized, while the ownership and margin stayed elsewhere. The supplier takes the risk. The owner captures the upside.

The most important insight: the supplier mindset is not learned on the job. It is learned in school. Engineering schools are the single most underleveraged force in Canada's innovation economy.

The real call to action is not to encourage more entrepreneurship. It is to start and scale world-class companies here in Canada."

You can read Allen's full post here.

Look for the rising tides -- and leave some upside on the table

Toronto-based Yung Wu, a serial entrepreneur and former chair of MaRS Innovation District, offers the best one-page Entreprenurs' Playbook I've ever seen.

You just know that every lesson here was learned in real time.

Click to embiggen, or download.

Follow Yung's blog at https://www.nfqventures.com/