You are browsing the archives of 2008 April.

The other day I wrote a kind of alternate history post in which the Spartans didn’t make it to Thermopylae to hold off the advancing Persian horde. As a result, Greece was conquered and Western civilization never got off the ground. What does this have to do with business blogging?
Taking action is risky, but not […]

Liz Strauss posted this list of SobCon bloggers … time to spread some linkage! Can’t wait to meet you on Friday.

Cliff Atkinson
Shashi Bellamkonda
Chris Brogan
Harry Brooks
Anita Bruzzese
Dave Bullock
Mark Carter
Brian Clark
Tom Clifford
Valerie Combs
Chris Cree
Lisa Cree
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “SobCon Almost Here!”, url: “http://www.wordsellinc.com/blog/blogs/sobcon-almost-here/” });

For small and medium-size business (SMB), sales and marketing tend to get lumped together in an indistinct mass of activities. Company leaders will say it’s inevitable, because everybody wears multiplel hats. Often, sales and marketing responsibilities fall on the owner, who also wears the finance hat and the purchasing hat and the IT hat.
All […]

Darlene McDaniel explains what it means to be a problem solver. Excellent advice for sales and customer service people as well as interviewees.
David Meerman Scott makes some important distinctions among the terms “Web 2.0 marketing”, “social media marketing”, and “social network marketing”. Like me, you may sometimes use these terms interchangeably and/or without knowing exactly […]

Note to reader: You may wonder what this post has to do with business blogs. I haven’t got a clue. Next week I’ll try to explain, but in the meantime, what are your thoughts? Do you see a connection?
In 480 B.C., King Xerxes of Persia crossed the Hellespont and invaded Greece with an overwhelming land […]

It is not unusual among small and midsize companies for marketing programs to be out of sync with the sales effort. Three misalignments cause this to happen.

Leadership doesn’t clearly distinguish between sales and marketing

Abattoir is a word you may have run across, especially if you fancy fiction or crave comics. What do you think abattoir means?
A. Fashionable, having refined taste
B. A chicken coop
C. A slaughterhouse
D. In a confused or delirious state
E. Excessively humid
Hint: the word comes from the French abattre, to beat down. The correct definition of abattoir, […]

Happy Earth Day!
Salazar Packaging, a client heavily focused on sustainable packaging, is always looking for ways to get their Earth-friendly message out and stimulate conversation about packaging and the environment. Easier said than done! Although packaging is a mature industry, sustainable packaging is a hot topic generating buzz in a hundred directions on any […]

Joanna Young asks, What does powerful writing mean to you? Turns out to be a rather challenging question. I tried to define powerful writing as “memorably evocative.” Writing that sticks in my head and evokes an emotion or an impulse or an attitude has power. But when I think of examples, I don’t see […]

David Maister’s new book, Strategy and the Fat Smoker, explains how to manage and lead a professional services organization. Its lessons apply equally well to any other type of business.
Although Maister’s insights should prove valuable to any business leader, his finest insights come in the one chapter of his book he suggests we don’t […]