As frequent readers of my monthly training articles know, I have been a huge advocate of using a “tech for touch” approach for many years. In training articles, webcasts, and in my on-site hotel sales training workshops, I have provided suggestions for using video email apps to put the “people parts” back into hotel sales. Whereas most sales conversations these days happen in email and in-app message exchanges, personalized video emails allow salespeople to stand out.
Pi Day has come around once again, which is also, coincidentally, Albert Einstein’s birthday. As I head to Lexington for the MBA Kentucky Education Conference, led by Alan Thorup, Matt O. sent, “I have an idea: We organize a 10k race in San Jose and call it ‘The Bank Run.’” (While we’re on sports, a moment of silence for Dick Fosbury who revolutionized the high jump in the mid-1960’s). High jumpers have a soft pad to land on, not so with some bank stocks Monday. Western Alliance Bancorp, supplier of warehouse lines to many an independent mortgage banker and parent of AmeriHome, First Republic Bank, Metropolitan Bank, PacWest Bancorp, and First Horizon. Fortunately, many have “bounced” but these are all non-money-center banks seemingly causing risk to the U.S. financial system. In Banking 101 one learns that borrowing short (by holding customer deposits) to lend long (by purchasing long bonds and MBS) to improve returns is b