by Mark O'Brien | Nov 17, 2014
If you’ve been keeping up with the experts (ahem), you’re like to have noticed many of them writing obituaries for branding (case in point). There’s a short list of reasons for which people write such things: They want to be controversial, in which...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 14, 2014
If you want to make yourself instantly unpopular, say this in a sales meeting: “Marketing is not a sales-support function. Sales is a marketing-fulfillment function.” But make sure the door is unlocked, the hallways are clear, and the elevator is held...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 6, 2014
We recently conducted a survey of 1,500 companies from the Fortune 1000 to determine what those companies would like their new websites to feature if they could have new websites just by snapping their fingers. These are the top five responses: Cool stuff More stuff...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 30, 2014
We once consulted with a company that had developed a new software application for revenue-cycle management. Their initial target market was large hospitals and medical centers. Justifiably jazzed, the company got its sales team revved up. It hired a telemarketing...
by Mark O'Brien | Oct 27, 2014
Though we’ve written about best practices before, we still hear references to them and read articles about them with disarming frequency. That frequency is disarming because it reflects stasis — a kind of settling for inactivity or unimaginativeness, rather than...