Get the name right

Just listened to a voice mail from a guy who’s company does “interactive holiday marketing.” In the voice mail he mentioned the name of someone that he claims he spoke to in the past here at my company. Only problem is there is no one here at my company that goes by the name he [...]

How NOT to use Facebook

As a habit, I follow closely what my companies competitors do…press releases, articles, service offerings, etc. And now with Facebook its as easy as becoming a fan of all my competitors to follow exactly what they are up to.
One of the companies I follow is Adecco. Great company, tremendous amount of success. No one can [...]

So you’re a service company and service is not your priority?

The management team at my company recently sat through a presentation done by Staffing Industry Analysts. They are an organization that tracks all sorts of trends within the world of staffing. It can be a little dry for those of you that don’t like numbers, charts and graphs. Their presentations don’t usually provide anything too [...]

Its not the size of the logo that counts

The title of this post really says it all. Don’t make your logo too big. I see it over and over, almost like a company feels that it won’t get noticed if their logo is too small.
The companies that pay boatloads of money to manage their brand and logo don’t use large logos, so why [...]

The road less traveled

As I was sorting through my feeds over New Year’s looking for something that seemed interesting, I came across a post on GigaOM. Its titled With 2008, Let’s Say Good-bye to Mediocrity. My first thought was that it is truly sad that we even have to be saying this, and I think Mr. Om is [...]

10 things you should never have on your website

Last week while surfing the Internet I came across a surprising number of shockingly bad websites. Which got me thinking about some things that should absolutely never be on a website. Below are 10 things that immediately came to mind, some of which I actually saw. Please feel free to add to the list in [...]

Distraction vs. engagement

Are your attempts at gaining new customers simply distractions to try and get their attention or methods for engaging them? There is a big difference.
Most attempts by companies to gain new customers are simply eye catching images, loud audio, bright colors and so on. They attempt to distract us from what we are doing and [...]

The four most infuriating words

“Sorry, its our policy.”
These are probably the four most infurating words you can possibly hear from any company representative when you are trying to resolve an issue.
Basically what the person is telling you is that they really don’t care about your problem and they really don’t care about trying to find a solution. By saying [...]

You learn nothing while you are speaking

I posted about this last December but it seems to be a subject that comes up over and over again.
People love to talk. They especially love to talk about themselves, which includes whatever it is that they are selling. I can’t count the number of times I have listened to sales pitches that started with [...]

You will be judged by your email address

I got a letter in the mail the other day from a company that claims to have the ability to lower my property tax. Interesting service if its true. The letter was fairly well written and had a real signature at the bottom. Nice touch.
But here was the problem. As formal and professional as the [...]