Negotiating the final terms of complex deals can be thorny.  Often, sales professionals find themselves in a situation where the customer holds all the cards. You may have invested time in the opportunity. You may have made a transaction or quota commitment … Continue reading →

You’ve probably heard of Netflix, the online DVD rental-by-mail service.  If you’re one of their ten million subscribers, you’ve probably enjoyed a couple of the two billion videos they’ve mailed out in the past 10 years. It’s a brilliant business … Continue reading →

In the final installment of our series on using social media for business, let’s look at LinkedIn, which is the most powerful professional networking tool available today. LinkedIn allows you to connect with business contacts and share information in a … Continue reading →

To round out our discussion of social networking, let’s take a look this week at Facebook and Twitter. The fact that these sites are being used for business purposes by major corporations is a recent phenomenon, and many companies today … Continue reading →

Did you ever imagine that businesses could be launched, fortunes built and careers made or lost as a result of something called the blogosphere? The word blog didn’t even exist ten years ago.  A college student named Justin Hall is … Continue reading →

Because of the recent spike in social networking activity, many companies are now considering whether to develop a social media platform for their company and products. But one of the questions often raised when it comes to using social media … Continue reading →

Over the last few years, social networking has become an important business tool in communicating with customers and the public at large. While the technology is still developing, social networking allows people to share various types of content online and … Continue reading →

Selling is one of the oldest human activities, essential to every civilization from the dawn of time. It is also one of the most pervasive of activities, since virtually every member of society offers something for sale, whether it’s their … Continue reading →

The butterfly effect is a graceful phrase that relates to an important concept in the science of chaos theory: “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” (But doesn’t the butterfly effect sound a lot more appealing?)  The concept has been around since … Continue reading →

Last week, we looked at how companies track and organize customer contacts using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software systems. These systems allow employees across departments to enter, store and access information regarding interactions with current and prospective customers. Now let’s take … Continue reading →