I walked into Gerry’s office, sat down, and asked “Gerry, how do you do it? You generate more than $8m a year in new business year after year. Your colleagues respect you. Your clients love you, and they keep coming back.”
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Gerry responded “Simple. I give my clients zero reasons to consider working with anyone else. When a client puts their trust in me and my team, I always go the extra mile to exceed their expectations in every aspect of the engagement. I want Deloitte to be the only logo my clients consider. This takes effort because we are not the least expensive option in the market. The clients I want to attract and keep are the ones who will spend the money on a service provider who is willing to go above and beyond their needs, even if it is more than they originally wanted to spend.”

​I recently had a “disagreement” with my wife, Aja. Allegedly, I was leaving a trail of personal items around the house that she kept picking up after me. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about but perhaps for a minute there was some truth in her allegations. And maybe, although I doubt it, this has happened more than once. I needed to quickly change my habits to improve our relationship.
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For the next several days I tuned into putting my dishes away, picking my dirty clothes up off the floor, and cleaning up anything I saw that would take a minute to do and yield a more positive living experience for the household, especially for my lovely wife.

​It was 2015 on a business trip in Dallas. I was the sales leader at the time for a national consulting firm. The trip was an opportunity to meet with the BD team in that office and see them in action. One of my youngest rising stars, Jim, was excited to take me out to lunch with one of his promising client prospects.

On the way to the restaurant, I asked Jim what he knew about the prospect whose name was Frank. He told me the basics – title, role, how long he had been at the company. Not much else. He promised me that we would learn more about Frank at lunch.