In addition to creating plans and budgets for next year, I also have to create and manage monthly business reports to monitor our sales activity.
One of our new promotions has goals that I want to highlight when met. Usually, graphs are the way to do this, but not with over 15 records to monitor. Instead, [...]

Thanksgiving is upon us again. Christmas is fast approaching. It can be a draining season. I know that I am loathing the long drive to Tennessee my family will start this afternoon. Holidays take energy, but they can be rewarding, which is why we love them so.
Same thing goes for budgeting for 2006. Gotta slug [...]

Just because this question came up a couple times recently, let me provide some definitions:
International business: A group of sister corporations that operate independently around the world. Each unit usually addresses the local market as best they see fit. How about Ford, Pizza Hut, Masterfoods.
Global business: a group of company divisions that work together as [...]

I was asked a couple weeks ago: “What about all those email newsletters the trade publications send out? Does anybody read those?”
I’m not a direct marketer, so I didn’t really have a good idea, but as a potential newsletter advertiser, the question is a good one. DM News provides a good answer, as reported by [...]

I usually don’t jump on new stuff, but since I’ve been pondering ‘client-side analytics’ for my websites, I signed up for the new Google Analytics on Monday when I first heard about it.
I added this blog and my company site. The website was a little balky and took some time to show actual data, but [...]

I get this nifty little magazine/promotional piece a few times a year called Product Marketing, which is targeted at technology product management. I don’t market software, but there is always something worthwhile in it. You’ll love this one:
As a sidebar to the cover article, the author makes parallels between Star Trek and marketing called: [...]

The title of this post is also the title of my presentation at ICC on Monday. Poking a stick at the directories, wasn’t I?
Thankfully, I don’t have to try to remember what I said during my ’sanity check’ presentation. My blogosphere buddy (and now in person) David Shaw does a great job finding the [...]

Most trade pubs run annual buyer’s guides, relics of pre-internet days. But you’ve got to imagine that a focused list of suppliers would be of value to their readership still. And so I diligently respond to update requests from magazines, especially when their buyer’s guide includes an online listing with a link (yay PageRank).
I’ve just [...]

Wow, going to the InfoCommerce Group’s annual conference was a terriffic experience. My thanks to Russ and Roxanne for inviting me to speak.
The exciting part was meeting so many different people from such diverse companies, all there interested in the same things I am. And it was really cool introducing myself to people who then [...]

Via MarketingVox, here is a cool new b2b search engine: VerticalSearch.com
Doing searches with it, it looks like the content comes almost exclusively from B2B media publications. Well, now that I’ve read their mission statement, they that’s exactly what they have indexed to start. But they are ambitious:

“Soon we will be adding tens of thousands of [...]