Featured interview with David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of, “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly.”
Writing, it’s a skill. It’s an art. If you’ve had the teeth-pulling, Novocain-less pleasure of reading many press releases or corporate product brochures, you know what I’m talking about. The solution? Hemingway’s “Rules of Writing.”
You can find top-performing sales teams in every industry. And just as many, if not more, that are so dysfunctional, their results hinge largely on lucky breaks. What separates the two? Here are three keys to optimizing your company’s sales function.
For a fighter pilot in combat, speed is everything. It improves maneuverability, allows faster target engagement, and it can be ‘converted’ to a higher altitude for better situational awareness of the battlefield. By combat-decorated fighter pilot and best-selling author Waldo Waldman.
Employees in even the most menial jobs will help their managers look good and succeed – if only the manager will give them the opportunity and appreciate their integrity.
Unmotivated employees have rightly been called “the black holes of the business universe.” Fortunately, motivation is not something a person is born with or without. Applying these Ten Commandments can go a long way to helping existing employees find their motivation.
All decision making processes are both rational and emotional. These two processes are sometimes hard to separate but they are both at work, especially in complex sales cycle.
The perfect order isn’t just for supply chains anymore. When one considers the impact it has on customer expectations and as a barometer of how well a company is fulfilling those expectations, it forces the issue of how demand-driven a supply chain really is.
Sales professionals who sell on value are a lot like Coach Wooden. They orchestrate their teams to align with the most urgent needs of prospects, capitalize on opportunities to excel and compete more often against themselves than letting a sales cycle degenerate into a price war.
Mentoring can happen in an instant, in a few well-chosen words, and initiate lasting and life-changing insights. By Dr. Woody Sears
How to identify the cast of culprits that threaten productive meetings.
The economy. Gas prices. Housing. Credit crisis. Healthcare. Education. War. Terrorism. Yes. We face significant problems. Can the problems we face be solved by the same minds that created them?
Authority is the tool of Neanderthal managers. The people-side of enterprise is where the gold is buried. Then why are all the people-managing/-motivating-manipulating models so complex and so often rooted in psycho-babble?
EDITORS NOTE: This is a story only the inimitable Lou Washington, Master of MIPS, and the Wyatt ERP of Cincom Manufacturing Business Solutions could string together and eventually make sense. Hold on.
LEAN BUSINESS PRINCIPLES … AND MAD MAGAZINE
How can “Lean” principles help you not only survive … but thrive in these turbulent times? And [...]
The myth of being able to grow a product, division or entire company without first enriching others is gone. The truth is that only by overbalancing the scales of service to channel partners including distributors, dealers and resellers can a company hope to keep growing.
Sure you know Bruce Lee the martial artist and movie star. But do you know Bruce Lee the philosopher, comedian or master of personal development?
It’s not often you can mix Batman, Aliens and Terminators in a business case study article. And it be completely true.
How to create triggers that will get millions of people to spread your ideas, share your stories and genuinely want to do business with you. By David Meerman Scott and Steve Kayser
How a famous poet can teach us that being a truly accomplished writer means knowing when to turn a beautiful phrase and when to speak plainly.
What are the most important characteristics?
The six warning signs of impending leadership failure.
In my training program and coaching work on Dealing With People You Can’t Stand, “Think-They-Know-It-All’s” often come up. If you ever find yourself dealing with a person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, try this…
All great presentations have one thing in common. Do you know what it is? Here are 10 examples down through the ages. Can you see it? And … what about the Greatest Presentation of All-Time?
The absolute BIGGEST challenge that entrepreneurs, artists, authors and other creative geniuses that come to me for help is productivity. Some know they need help with time management techniques. Others are struggling but they haven’t discovered that poor time management is the source of their frustration.
By asking a few questions, I zero in on the [...]
The air conditioned briefing room felt as cold as ice as I waited for the arrival of my instructor. I was a bundle of nerves. One more ‘busted’ check ride would put me one flight away from washing out of Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT). My dream of becoming a fighter pilot hung by a thread …
Good stories fascinate us all. They always have. They always will. Basically, there are two types of stories: Truth Stories and True Stories. Sometimes truthfulness doesn’t matter. That’s right … but meaning always does.
When people say to me: ‘I want to go someplace, but I don’t know where; I want to do something, but not what I’m doing; I don’t know what I want to do, and if I sound confused, that’s part of my trouble’ …I tell them, “You have to …”
What does it mean to have ‘B.A.L.L.S’? Is that even a good thing … for a female?
Forget the lip-job to quality. Here are four ways to make quality a passion – and a reality. First step? Leave behind marketing exaggeration and make your product’s quality real.
No industry has suffered from this current recession more than U.S. manufacturing. But before jobs come back, manufacturers are predicted to first invest in infrastructure and technology to grow their business profit.
In 1519, Hernan Cortés landed with a fleet of 12 ships near present day Veracruz, Mexico. The flotilla held 500 Spaniards, 300 natives, a dozen horses and a few cannons. Cortés’ aim was to conquer the Aztec Empire and take possession of its great wealth. The legend is that before launching the attack, Cortés burned his ships to prevent his men from retreating.
Do you know the one skill that’s considered to be an absolute “must have” in the complex sale? To win at the complex sale, one must be a storyteller, master tactician, strategist, cajoler, evaluator, philosopher, psychologist, bean counter and techno-geek. All rolled into one. But, even with all of that, there is one skill that is an absolute “must have” in the complex sale.
The rules for marketing and PR have changed, and everyone, from marketing executives to business owners and entrepreneurs, needs to understand the new landscape if they want to stay relevant in today’s online world.
When I was younger, I was a widely known movie star. My heartless character was well-documented. I have proof, recorded during my youth, to defend myself against the “Having a Big Heart” charge.
John Perkins has seen the signs of today’s economic meltdown before. The subprime mortgage fiascos, the banking industry collapse, the rising tide of unemployment, the shuttering of small businesses across the landscape are all too familiar symptoms of a far greater disease. In his former life as an economic hit man, he was on the front lines both as an observer and a perpetrator of events, once confined only to the third world, that have now sent the United States—and in fact the entire planet—spiraling toward disaster
A while back I wrote an article titled “The End of Marketing and PR.” The article reviewed a lot of the new media applications, platforms and networks that can help you connect with customers. Things like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Animoto, StumbleUpon, SlideRocket, widgets, blidgets and a bunch of other whatchamacallit-idgets. But they all require [...]
I can’t tell you how many times I am approached by entrepreneurs who ask me, “Can I afford to do PR?” I always answer the same way: “You can’t afford NOT to do PR.”
How STORY principles can be used in business presentations.
“The meeting is at 2 p.m. I’ll e-mail you a copy of the agenda, your personal agenda and the hidden agenda.”
A Steve Jobs presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production—a great script, heroes and villains, stage props, breathtaking visuals, and one moment that makes the price of admission well worth it. How does he do it?
