I had the pleasure of attending SMX Advanced, the premier Search Marketing Expo, earlier this month. SMX Advanced is recognized as being the go-to event of the year for Search Engine Marketers and all the big names in the industry are in attendance.

Let’s take a look some of the information that was put forward that business software resellers can use in their inbound marketing strategies. Continue Reading…

As a copywriter and a former reporter, I’m always on the lookout for clichés in copy.

A journalism professor drove this home for me many years ago by sharing his least favourite cliché:

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Continue Reading…

“No not these leads, I want those leads…I want the Glengarry leads (a bunch of them).”

As sales managers or executives, what’s the most common request we hear from sales people? Continue Reading…

Photo taken by Ryan Folstad.

Salesworks welcomes the newest member of the team, a 4-month old Schipperke puppy. His name is yet to be determined but it’s been narrowed down to either “Jackson” or “Booker”.

Post a comment with your favorite name (of the two) and help Cathy decide.

Growing Pains

Like the gangly teenager that transitions from childhood to adulthood, the growing Microsoft Dynamics Partner often faces difficult but necessary growing pains.

As partners approach 30 to 40 employees ($6.0m – $8.0m in revenues), there is a tendency for owners to add a layer of mid-level management to control functional groups like sales, marketing, delivery, lines of business or even separate offices. Continue Reading…

Mobile devices target a more specific audience than that of the traditional web.  These days the majority of executives use smartphones and companies are still spending on mobility and productivity tools for small to medium-sized businesses.

According to a Nielsen report in 2009 more than half of the smartphones on the market today are used for business.  Apple recently announced selling 50 Million iPhones/iPods and Google has announced they are making 100,000 activations per month of new devices.  With only those two statistics combined you have a HUGE emerging market of business users to target.

While executives are using their phones for business, they are also using them for pleasure, installing games and applications.  Ignoring this advertising channel is eliminating an emerging revenue stream. Continue Reading…

How important is choosing the right color palette for your company image?

This choice can have endless repercussions on your business. You want to send a positive message about yourself in your respective industry. Colors like blue and black may be great in sales, but in other arenas it can be downright depressing.

Continue Reading…

After an enlightening client meeting this week, I realize there are a number of outlying questions about blogging – especially when blogging B2B.

How often should we post a blog? How many words are too many words for a blog? What topics should we blog about? What value does a blog bring to my website?

Continue Reading…

Sales organizations spend tens of thousands of dollars each year investing in training their sales force to improve methodologies, product knowledge, time and activity management, negotiation skills, etc.  Yet most organizations neglect development of competencies critical to influencing the factors that fundamentally drive all prospect decisions: Human Psychology.

Continue Reading…

It could be because it’s spring.

Or, perhaps it’s a “recession hangover” effect.

Or maybe, it’s just because none of us are getting any younger.

Whatever the reason, most of the owners that I work with these days are increasingly thinking about how they can get the best possible return on all the years of effort (and money) they’ve invested in their business, when it comes time to sell.

There is no simple answer, of course, but the best starting point is to consider how businesses (private and for that matter, public) are typically valued.

In general, 3 things factor heavily into what an investor is willing to pay for any business: Continue Reading…