columbia university

Want to close a sale? When choosing a time to meet with your customer, don't just take the first appointment time offered to you. A recent study looked at decisions by judges, and revealed startling differences in outcomes at different…

Think the way to sell more is to have a frenetic pitchman whip customers into a buying frenzy? Actually, relaxed customers are bigger spenders. A new study that will appear in the Journal of Marketing Research found that relaxed…

If you are in sales, do you touch your customers? In these litigious days, perhaps not. But there's research that shows a woman's light touch on a subject's shoulder caused a change in risk-taking behavior. (Sorry, guys, it only worked…

In Managing by Mistakes, I wrote about the power of learning from mistakes. Some of the most successful individuals in different fields credit relentless focus on even small mistakes with their high achievement. Researchers at Columbia…

It was pure serendipity that I read Brand Immortality by Pringle and Field on my way to a conference where I was to speak about branding to a group of enrollment executives from colleges and universities. It wasn't a giant "Aha!" moment,…

Why do people react with fear when they see a snake, even though they have never been bitten by a snake or even had much contact with the reptiles? New research shows that the same areas of the brain that react to a personal experience…