Category: Marketing

Reading Time: < 1 minute A department store CEO once remarked that half his advertising was effective; he just wasn’t sure which half.  The advertising team behind a long series of memorable Geico Insurance commercials over the years may not be sure either, but they’ve launched a creative initiative to ensure they’re getting all the mileage they can

Reading Time: < 1 minute Nobody would dispute that referrals are a vital aspect of sales success but do you really understand where they come from and how to systematically generate them?  Vistage Chief Research Officer Joe Galvin asked several thousand Vistage members running SMB companies to contribute their best practices in referral generation.   This short article

Reading Time: < 1 minute Peter Drucker once remarked that the best business in the world was a mailbox to which people sent money. While this may be ideal, most businesses require some intermediate steps; such as lead generation. Historically, lead generation required many outbound activities by sales and marketing.  Social media has turned that on its head and

Reading Time: < 1 minute We think of Steve Jobs as a great creative entrepreneur whose feel for the market and insights into design created great products that people stand in line for. He was also very persuasive and a great communicator.  If you’d like a few tips on one particular aspect of his abilities,

Reading Time: < 1 minute Microsoft paid $26 Billion for LinkedIn.  The following will help C-Level execs understand why.  Many CEOs and direct reports have a personal or company page on this site but know little about the power that LinkedIn offers them, so they don’t challenge their teams to use it to its fullest. 

Reading Time: < 1 minute August 16 was the 40th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley at age 42. (Hard to believe Elvis would be 82 now!)  Much has, is and will be written about “The King” and I will not attempt to recount his astonishing musical career here. But Elvis has much to

Reading Time: < 1 minute The two most eagerly awaited events every spring are the opening of baseball season and Mary Meeker’s, (aka Queen of the Internet,) annual Internet Trends presentation.  As the lead internet analyst at VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers,  millions of business people rely on her analysis and predictions. Whether

Reading Time: < 1 minute Quality isn’t everything.  Case in point: Domino’s Pizza.  Founder Tom Monaghan discovered that the key to success in the pizza business wasn’t great pizza, but free delivery.    But no competitive advantage lasts forever and the company’s subpar pizza began to deliver subpar results, no matter how fast it’s delivered, especially

Reading Time: < 1 minute Great advice can come from unexpected quarters if we are ready for it.  To wit:  check out this short story about how a father’s advice created a great salesman and how we often make our jobs harder than they need to be.  Consider some surfer dude sales advice before you

Reading Time: < 1 minute If you’re reading this  and have not availed yourself of membership in Vistage or other C-Level Peer Group,  take a few minutes for an overview of peer power by a man who literally wrote the book on the subject.   Leo Bottary, author of  “The Power of Peers” was recently interviewed