March 2007
Top 10 Marketing Mistakes
"Marketers are key strategic assets to any company's bottom line. But executives and other key players frequently fail to see the connection between marketing and revenue, and oftentimes instead of seeing marketers as true strategic partners, these C-level execs see them just as a tool for building awareness for their products and services. The result? Marketers are underutilized and companies miss out on the maximum ROI from their human capital."
How do you over come these problems? continue reading...
It’s our policy, so deal with it.
Ever work with a vendor that is so stringent on their policy that they forget who keeps them in business?
A few years ago, my wife wanted a brand new entertainment center (no, not with the big screen). I went to a local furniture store and bought her a unit that I had to assemble. That was okay, because I had a Saturday to do it. continue reading...
The two most important questions sales people never ask.
Of all the questions we ask (especially sales people) we often forget the two most important questions.
How much can you spend? How do you want to finance? How many users do you have? What are your goals and aspirations?
Don't we get a lot of questions on a daily bases? Have you ever asked questions that you don't seem to get the answer you were hoping for? Have you ever been asked a question that you think really doesn't matter? Are these enough questions for now?
continue reading...
Teaching or Preaching?
When it is time to present something to an audience, do you find yourself teaching them or preaching to them?
It is very hard, sometimes, to draw the distinction, but here is a little unasked for advice.
- If you are talking more than you are asking for input, you are preaching.
- If your audience isn't taking very many notes or aren't even nodding their heads, you are preaching.
- If you are having a hard time getting audience response, you are preaching
- If you rely on a PowerPoint presentation too much, you are preaching.
Sales tactics you can’t live without.
The old ways of selling are out... our customers expect so much more.
Raintoday.com had developed a short eBook titled The One Piece of Advice You Can't Sell Without. It is a great book. I think that it is not just aimed at sales professionals. It is a short read and I think that everyone can benefit from it.
You can go to Raintoday.com or download here.
Let me know what you think of it.
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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Your information is not as private as you thought.
Ever use a USB key on a public computer? Be careful...
I found this article at http://www.schneier.com. Your information is not as secure as you might think.
USB Dumper.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Yikes… that’s a lot of information!
There is an awful lot of information out there. How in the world do we sort through it all?
Have you ever heard of an RSS feed? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Is it really simple?
If you are ever on a site that has this symbol
that means that you can get information fed right to you without having to browse all the pages. For example, I have feeds coming to me from InfoWorld and Fox News (to name a few). What I really like is that I don't have to spend time looking for information. I get about 200 articles a day ready for me to read and if I don't want to read them, I just ignore them.
How do you get the information to you? Well, you need to have an aggregator. I use Snarfer from http://www.snarfware.com/. You can also get a Google Home Page or a Yahoo Home Page and let them aggregate the information for you for free. It just depends on what you like.
All you have to do is load the software, click on the RSS feed link, and then copy and paste the URL into your aggregator.
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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Have you ever heard of an RSS feed? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Is it really simple?
If you are ever on a site that has this symbol
that means that you can get information fed right to you without having to browse all the pages. For example, I have feeds coming to me from InfoWorld and Fox News (to name a few). What I really like is that I don't have to spend time looking for information. I get about 200 articles a day ready for me to read and if I don't want to read them, I just ignore them.
How do you get the information to you? Well, you need to have an aggregator. I use Snarfer from http://www.snarfware.com/. You can also get a Google Home Page or a Yahoo Home Page and let them aggregate the information for you for free. It just depends on what you like.
All you have to do is load the software, click on the RSS feed link
, and then copy and paste the URL into your aggregator.
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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
You’re complaining too much…
How much energy do you waste by complaining?
I don't know how tired you get of hearing complaints, but they never help.
According to Brainy Dictionary a complaint is, "To give utterance to expression of grief, pain, censure, regret. etc.; to lament; to murmur; to find fault; -- commonly used with of." Some of the key words here are censure, murmur or find fault.
Not only do you waste your energy, but you also waste the energy of the people to whom you complain.
I know that it is important to get things fixed in an organization. We need to help our vendors be better and we need to help those with whom we work be better. Is complaining really the way to do it?
continue reading...
The Business of Innovation.
"Business intelligence (BI) is a business management term which refers to applications and technologies which are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information about their company operations." (lifted from Business Intelligence at Wikipedia).
The authors at training magazine wrote a great little article about the business of innovation. They said, "Companies that consistently emphasize "delivering value" over creativity are significantly more effective at innovating, according to the 2007 futurethink Innovation Tracker, a survey conducted by innovation research, tools, and service firm futurethink."
In my opinion, it is the act of innovation that allows for business intelligence to be a reality.
Read the rest of the article at The Business of Innovation.
Thanks to Jared for the tip on this article.
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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
Information is easier to steal if you don’t put it on your laptop
TechDirt this week had a blog posting titled Why Keep Personal Information on a Laptop When It's Much Easier to Steal on a CD.
It is a pretty interesting article and points out that companies, like insurance companies, are not very careful with their data.
How often do you compromise your security for a little convenience?
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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher's Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.
