Resources for Business Owners and Leaders
Featured Articles
Business consultant & CEO advisor Jane Gentry lends her expertise in these articles on strategy and leadership.
January 2025 | By Pat Alacqua and Jane Gentry
The tradeshow industry thrives on a blend of creativity and logistics, where professionals transform ambitious ideas into reality. For those transitioning from hands-on roles to leadership, the shift can feel like a loss of identity, but success in this new role doesn’t mean losing the resilient, adaptable, and determined “whatever-it-takes” DNA that defines the industry.
October 25, 2024 | By Pat Alacqua and Jane Gentry
As your business grows, the challenges of scaling—like role confusion, overburdened managers, and inefficiencies—can threaten success. In this article, Pat Alacqua and Jane Gentry explore how these “growing pains” emerge when internal systems fail to keep pace with expansion. The authors provide a roadmap to address critical milestones and identify the key “invisible signposts” that signal deeper organizational gaps needing attention. Download the full article to uncover strategies for overcoming these challenges.
June 28, 2024 | By Jane Gentry
The days of producing a mediocre product/service and leveraging a powerful marketing engine to overcome deficiencies are over. Today’s buyer demands high quality and innovation. This has changed what strategy means to a business leader. Now, strategy is like building the plane while you are flying it. It requires continuous innovation, listening to the marketing and adjusting.
June 18, 2024 | By Jane Gentry
As a CEO or leader, you are at the helm of steering your businesses through the choppy waters of competition, market changes, and internal challenges. How do you decide where to take the business or your offering? Here are four strategy frameworks that can empower you to chart your next steps.
June 13, 2024 | By Jane Gentry
In a tough labor market, it can be tempting to keep an employee who is difficult or disruptive to the organization just to have a role filled. Too often though, leaders don’t realize the impact on productivity and engagement a toxic employee can have on the business’ culture. Unveil the hidden impact of toxicity on your business.
June 7, 2024 | By Jane Gentry
There comes a time in every leader’s journey when they must ask themselves a difficult question: “Is it time to fire myself?” The thought of stepping back as the CEO can be daunting. It’s not just about relinquishing control; it’s about acknowledging that the organization might benefit from a change in leadership.
May 28, 2024 | By Jane Gentry
For many business owners, the idea of passing the torch to their children is not just a succession plan; it’s a legacy. It’s a way to ensure that the fruits of their lifelong labor continue to flourish within the family. However, before you decide to hand over your most valuable asset to your child, there are critical considerations to ensure that this transition benefits both the business and your family’s future.
April 30, 2024 | By Jane Gentry
In today’s dynamic business landscape, organizations seek innovative strategies to drive growth, enhance productivity, and foster leadership development. Enter EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), a comprehensive framework that aligns vision, strategy, and execution. But can it do more? How can we leverage this system as a development tool to empower high-performing individuals? The answer lies in leveraging rocks—not the geological kind, but strategic objectives that propel organizations forward.
April 2024 | By Jane Gentry
The traditional hiring playbook is changing. As employers increasingly recognize that degrees and job titles alone don’t predict success, skills-based hiring steps into the spotlight. That isn’t to say that academic credentials don’t matter, but rather, that employees have so much more to offer than only what they learned in academia.
June 6, 2023 | By Jane Gentry
Hybrid workplaces are becoming increasingly popular because they offer plenty of benefits like flexibility, cost savings, and happy employees. But, as with anything, there are challenges that come along with it.
May 24, 2023 | By Jane Gentry
Podcasts have become a popular platform for guest appearances by business professionals sharing their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. To fully leverage the opportunity, it’s important to prepare appropriately.
May 16, 2023 | By Jane Gentry
Inspirational leadership is all about creating a vision for the future and inspiring others to work together towards a common goal. Appealing to employee emotions and values, inspirational leaders ultimately drive greater success.
February 15, 2023 | By Jane Gentry
It is more important than ever to know what levers to pull to improve effectiveness. Should you focus on AI, technology, enablement, or something else? These are issues that high-performing leaders consider and act on.
February 7, 2023 | By Jane Gentry
If your success or the success of your company involves achieving results through others and those others happen to work for you or buy from you, then creating a Socially Intelligent culture is critical to your success.
January 31, 2023 | By Jane Gentry
The way out of a situation where a mistake has been made is not diversion or redirection. The way to salvage the client relationship is to acknowledge the client’s feelings, accept accountability for the error and work to find a mutually satisfactory way to move forward.
October 18, 2022 | By Jane Gentry
There is a time and a place where training is the right lever to pull – and it’s not when you’re trying to solve a development problem. Do you understand the difference between training and development?
August 9, 2022 | By Jane Gentry
Talent retention is quickly becoming the top challenge faced by CEOs and leaders. Learn how to navigate the waters of today’s tightening talent pool while ensuring your best talent doesn’t jump ship.
July, 2019 | By Jane Gentry
With B2B buyers shifting their decision-making process away from salespeople, Jane Gentry provides four ways a seller can change their perspective of the evolving prospecting funnel.
April 19, 2019 | By
From tips on hiring and onboarding salespeople to establishing sales tools and processes, Jane Gentry, discusses 4 ways to improve your sales team’s effectiveness.
August 22, 2018 | By Roshni Baronia, Strategic Sales Expert
Jane Gentry speaks to the natural leadership style of women in this article by Roshni Baronia discussing ways women in leadership roles can and should avoid blending in.
April 11, 2018 | By Jane Gentry
Jane Gentry describes the role your character plays when building a relationship with clients. Jane shares what trust-building character looks like in this Sales Pop! article.
December 19, 2017 | By Jane Gentry
How has relationship building become such a deficiency in business? Executive Coach and Business Consultant Jane Gentry explains how technology has created this skill gap.
November 13, 2017 | By Jane Gentry
Leadership Expert Jane Gentry shares six steps you can take to be more accountable. Being known as accountable is vital to becoming a valued resource for your client.
August 27, 2017 | By Jane Gentry
Jane Gentry explains the crucial difference between the organizational terms learning and development, and provides tips on how to train and develop your team effectively.
July 5, 2017 | By
With over 30 years of experience in leadership and sales, Jane Gentry provides insight on how to enable your selling team, through improvements to processes, tools, and coaching.
November 9, 2016 | By
Sales and Leadership expert, Jane Gentry, joins a panel of 21 experts in sales to share tips and guidance for women in sales and business.
Meet Jane
ABOUT JANE GENTRY
Jane Gentry has had a successful 30-year career as a CEO, Business Consultant, Executive Coach, and Keynoter. Jane formed her practice in 1999 and since then has partnered with her clients to improve growth, profitability, client retention, employee retention, leadership capabilities and business value.
Jane leverages strategies including the proprietary Value Blueprint to enable business owners and leaders to successfully create healthy organizations, plan for succession or sell their businesses for the highest possible market value. Jane is considered one of the top voices in leadership and sales.
