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Most small business owners and sales managers avoid conversations that could result in negative feedback. But this article from Business Week makes a compelling case that some unpleasant truths are essential for planning and can help you increase sales. Read More

Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger lead the charge in teaching salespeople and business owners how to use social media to best effect. Check out their new book, Sociable! Read More

Your web designer will make a number of choices during the design and setup phase of your website. Some of them will affect your positions in Google, now and for years to come. This article takes a look at some of those factors and lists 7 tips to ensure the web design phase helps your SEO instead of harming it. Read More

Seth Godin asks business owners to consider not what each customer represents in a single purchase or contract for services, but rather what the lifetime value of a happy customer who keeps coming back might be. If we did, Seth suggests, we might spend more time, energy and money to bring good customers in, give them great service, try to keep the Read More

If you're not getting the response you think you should be getting, look at the offer first. The strategic process in old-fashioned Direct Marketing is matching up the right list with the right offer— segmenting the list into micro-segments (or “splits”), and tailoring specialized offers to make the offer more relevant. Read More

I get daily pitches from PR folks and business owners asking me to write about their news, launch, product, or survey. On one hand, I still think it's awfully cool that people think enough of blogs and this blogger to pitch me. (Can't imaging what some really big blogs endure.) On the other hand, I sure see my share of really bad pitches. Read More

I'm just starting out and have a really tight budget. Do you have any free or low cost suggestions for ways to get my business started? Read More

Jonathan Fields, the "Career Renegade", challenges entrepreneurs to avoid trying to duplicate past success. Duplicating past efforts may be a temptation but such attempts are often unsuccessful because in most cases circumstances in the market and in others have changed. Watch the video for Jonathan's inspiring message. Read More

Some people are clueless when it comes to the Web. This article at WebProNews outlines four of them. It's a good article that will make you think. I disagree with putting Sarah Palin in there though. I doubt she had anything to do with a letter sent by the Attorney General. That was a political cheap shot that can be traced back to HuffPo. We Read More

Although there are some key differences between direct mail and e-mail, sometimes old direct mail tricks can work wonders in the relatively new e-mail channel. Case in point: in a recent test I did with a client, we added a Johnson Box to its e-mail control. It generated a 220 percent lift in response rate! Here's a brief overview of the results, Read More