Can I Take 9 Minutes of Your Time? George Bernard Shaw once said, “Sorry for the letter, I didn’t have time to write a postcard.” He knew that it took more time to summarize his thoughts to fit concisely on a postcard then to fill a letter. Applying this logic to meeting presentations leads to better and more productive communications.…

In a recent article in The Atlantic  (“Why Don’t Young Americans Buy Cars?”) Jordan Weissmann explored the sharp decline in car sales to Millennials. He wondered aloud if it is a generational shift or just a lackluster economy. Either way, today’s marketers need to understand what’s going on inside the heads of those earphone wearing, iPhone toting, Zipcar driving young…

Most businesses use e-mail to communicate with their customers. But with open rates at all time lows, marketers may want to consider a best practice used by newspaper publishers in the last century to sell special additions printed to cover late-breaking news. E-mail subject lines are the newspaper boys of yesteryear. They should be designed to convince a recipient that…

It’s the time of year when sales leaders contemplate training initiatives to boost performance in the coming year. The problem is that training courses alone rarely deliver on their promise. Think back to fourth grade. How much do you remember about chapter four in your history book? Your answer is likely, not much, if anything. On the other hand, you…

Most people think that the MasterCard in their wallet comes from MasterCard. But actually, banks issue cards. MasterCard wants to change its culture and public perception from one of a financial services company to the tech firm it really is.  Changing market perception is tough but they’ve simplified the process with a roadmap other companies, big and small can follow.…

If you’ve been trying to find sales reps that are gregarious, outgoing, and assertive, you may be barking up the wrong tree.  A Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania study says the best reps are actually people who are “ambiverts”—neither introverted nor extroverted but somewhere in between. After studying more than 300 sales reps, it was found that reps…

Just like sportscaster Warner Wolf knew years ago, people like video. In fact, ComScore is reporting that the average person watches 22 hours a month, many in short-form videos, taking only a minute or so to view. Using video with other marketing channels engages prospects more effectively than words alone. Typical email open rates, for instance, shoot from an average…