The winter freeze seems to come earlier every year. With the colder temperatures, everyday responsibilities that are a breeze in warmer months become more taxing during winter: whether it’s thawing your car windshield, making the commute to work in stalled traffic or staying alert during the early evening sunset, it takes a little extra time to complete simple tasks when it’s cold outside. Business tends to stall as well: unless your industry can rely on consistent holiday business, you will likely see less traffic during the fourth quarter. With this ebb in the professional world it can be easy to get discouraged. Rather than remain stagnant or fall behind, we recommend considering this an opportunity to get creative with your time. Check out our three ways to stay motivated during the winter months below!

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you’re about to dive into a glorious spread of stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean and sweet potato casseroles, pumpkin pie, and of course, turkey! But while you’re waiting for the food to finally hit the table, we want to take a quick moment to briefly present five reasons that we’re incredibly thankful this year and explain how your business directly benefits from each.

Bookended between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s safe to say that Small Business Saturday runs an extreme risk of being completely overshadowed. Is this shopping holiday truly effective for our country’s valued small businesses?

Teamwork is everywhere. Whether you work on a team of individuals to accomplish a project or you simply have coworkers in different departments, there is always an aspect of teamwork that comes through in every professional setting. The dynamics within any team feed into company culture, and since company culture is the backbone of your work environment this impacts every employee directly. If you find your team struggling with productivity and commitment, check out our five ways you can improve your team starting today!

If you haven’t started the process of reviewing this last year’s ROI and defining company goals for the next year, you soon will be. That process typically involves budget discussions and often the marketing budget is up for debate. Additionally, most marketing contracts are up for renewal toward the end of the year. Business owners and marketing professionals wrestle over whether or not to leave the marketing budget the same, increase it or even cut it back. To guide that discussion, we’ve identified the following important considerations to help you make the most of your advertising investment in the coming year.

Here is Part 2 in our 2-part series on common mistakes that businesses make trying to write their own radio ads. While the first three mistakes are frustrating enough…these last four cause professional writers and producers everywhere to groan inwardly and smack their foreheads in exasperation.

When it comes to advertising on the radio, it’s common for business owners to feel that they are in the best position to know what needs to be said about their business on the air -- and how to say it.  It’s easy to understand why they feel that way; it IS their business, after all.  However, in most cases, they’re incorrect.  They are no more in a position of expertise on how to advertise their own business than a non-doctor is on how to diagnose his or her own problem.  Unfortunately, there are still those business owners who will go on ahead and write their own radio scripts anyway… and we find that, most of the time, they make the same 7 mistakes...

When you hear the word 'sales,' you likely have a preconceived notion. Maybe it’s a knock on your front door from someone trying to rope you into the latest gadget, or a greasy salesman who won’t take no for an answer. Whatever this image may be, the common traits of these stereotypes are confrontational and aggressive in nature. However, sales come in many different styles depending on the business and industry. One of the styles of sales that has redefined the relationship between salesperson and customer is consultative sales. Also known as solution selling, consultative sales puts the focus on customer needs and addresses these with the services or products the consultant can offer as a solution for their client. Check out the three differences that set consultative sales apart from other sales roles:

Here lies a dead business.

Cause of Death: Lack of Advertising

Brand­ing and posi­tion­ing almost always involve theft and warfare.

The mean­ing of your brand and the “posi­tion” you want in the minds of con­sumers is usu­al­ly already occu­pied, or at least con­tested, by another brand. Some­body else owns, or is try­ing to own, what you want because there are only a few posi­tions worth own­ing. If you want to plant your flag on a certain piece of men­tal real estate, you’ve got to remove the flag of your competitors first. Either steal the land out from under them or fight for it:  theft and warfare.