You can’t accomplish something if you don’t know what you want to accomplish. Having a vision provides the organization a purpose. Too often businesses just want more, more of everything, which is understandable. However, just more is unclear.

What if the new sales and marketing organization earns just $1 more than the previous period? Alternatively, what if they double revenue without increasing profit? There are too many unknowns.

A good vision would define success by first setting a number. That number, the goal, is best when it’s a SMART goal: specific, measurable, achievable, results oriented, and time specific. The vision could also define what the organization is known for, how they will look, and maybe even and a mission statement.

2) Hire the right leader.

Every team needs a leader. Your sales and marketing team leader should be someone with sales and marketing skills; experience leading teams; the ability to identify talent; and mostly a personality that inspires people to follow. That’s the true definition of a leader: someone that people follows. And it’s so much more than just being a boss, because a good leader should be able to follow too. Empathetic listening, the ability to see the whole picture from every perspective, will aid in the decision making.

3) Identify the what resources you currently have to accomplish the vision.

Bootstrap, it’s the accounting word of the decade. I both hate it and love it. I hate bootstrapping because sometimes it’s just a way of an organization being cheap, not properly funding a project.

Alternatively, bootstrapping can be a great way to really understand what is already available. I guess what I mean is that much of your marketing talent may already be on the staff, in the engineering department. Why spend thousands of dollars to outsource technical content when you can maybe just inspire your engineers to share their thoughts on a blog?

The main thing is that no matter what, when you build a sales and marketing team, you can’t just ignore what’s already available. There are people within the company that have ideas and material that may just needing editing. Before you go asking for more money, make sure you exhaust all the resources that are already paid for.

4) Learn your customer.

Who wants and needs your product? Before you start to build out a communication strategy you need to first understand who your customer is. One idea is to use traditional marketing methods. For example, you can research the marketplace and build out a data-rich plan for each target market. It takes time to do good market research and no matter how much data you collect, there will always be assumptions based on imperfect information.

Another methodology that I enjoy is creating buyer personas. A persona is about defining each typical buyer and creating a character out of them, it gives your market research a personality. This way, you’re not writing a sedan car ad for married women, between the ages of 45 and 65, that live in the tri-state area. But instead, you’re writing for Susan, a 52-year-old married woman that is eager to move from the family minivan/taxi to her own luxury sedan now that the kids are in high school.

Want to learn the other 6 steps? Shoot me an e-mail and I’ll more than gladly share them with you.

Google’s search algorithm likes fresh content, at least that’s what I’ve heard. Fresh content for most mundane topical websites isn’t hard to produce. On the other hand, most businesses don’t feel their products and services are so mundane. In fact, marketing is about highlighting the uniqueness of the business’s offering to the consumer. Even if you’re selling an everyday household product you feel you’re providing something special to the marketplace. Unique content that is regularly published meets both Google’s demand and a business’s need to look different from competitors.

Second, it seems like every business wants to have a Facebook page or push out tweets. It seems logical, especially if that’s where your customers congregate. The challenge is not letting your consumers see a dead page. There is nothing, speaking personally and from experience, than a social media account that is unused. It basically says, “look at us NOT being social.” My good friend Brian always said that a business shouldn’t use a social media platform if their not a social company.

We all understand the meaning behind the saying content is king. And because of the immediacy of the Internet, regularly published content is critical. Thus, marketing is different.

Think of the Four P’s of marketing: 1) product, 2) placement, 3) promotion, and 4) price. Now consider creating content. Can you outsource your current content needs to just any writer? Typically, no.

You see, in the past before Google, you could just hire an ad agency to buy you marketing spots in any media outlet. Sure, you needed to create content but the process was drawn-out and tedious. Today a business needs to publish a detailed technical blog about tomorrow’s product and respond to yesterday’s Facebook post. The speed and regularity in which writing and editing takes place requires someone that knows what they’re talking about.

Translated for my accounting mind: why spend the money to outsource something that only an expert must do all the time?

So the world of marketing has changed. Instead of each marketing firm being a one-stop shop for their clients, the new marketing firm must realize that much of the work, due to basic cost accounting principles, will in the long-run be done in house. This transition happened for the accounting industry too with the advent of accounting software. Bookkeeping can be done in-house whereas tax preparation is outsourced.

Sen. Charles Schumer assured critics of the Buffett Rule that “we don’t begrudge wealth in this country, in fact, it is part of the American dream to apply yourself and become successful.” However, he argued that the “middle class can no longer bear the burden of reducing our deficits alone,” and that there needs to be “shared sacrifice.” via Capitol Confidential » Gillibrand, Schumer commit to support ‘Buffett Rule’ in showdown vote Monday.

Sen Schumer swears he and his fellow liberals don’t begrudge wealth but his actions prove otherwise. I can’t imagine anyone that feels that a wealthier person should pay less in taxes than a poorer person, but the Buffett Rule is more about getting back at the rich.

There are better ways to fix the tax code, like for one, scrapping the whole thing and simplifying it to a few rates and maybe a half dozen deductions. The Buffett Rule only add to the complexity of the IRS and worse pits Americans against each other.

But that’s the point isn’t it? The traditional high school with a 1,000 kids, lockers, sports, lunch, and the occasional academic course is dying. K-12 is a good idea for  some but what about new alternatives. Fairfax county is trying to be innovative:

It’s a reimagination of the American high school experience. And it’s a nod to the power of the school choice movement, which has given rise to the widespread expectation that parents should have a menu of options to customize their children’s education. via Fairfax County considers creating virtual high school – The Washington Post.

I’m not sure if this is the greatest idea but I like people being entrepreneurial. And parents, if your kids went, excuse me, signed on to this school they’d be just fine.

Ignore user needs and usability. Don’t bother to define your users before you begin, either. Craft your content from your perspective, not theirs. Don’t create user funnels through the site to lead them in and engage them; they’ll find what they want eventually. via Web Sites – Four Ways to Create a Worthless B2B Website : MarketingProfs Article.

1. Identify as many linking root domains as possible using various backlinks data sources.
2. Check the ToolBar PageRank (TBPR) for all linking root domains and pay attention on the TBPR distribution
3. Work out the percentage of linking root domains that has been reindexed
4. Check social metrics distribution (optional)
5. Repeat steps 2,3 and 4 periodically (e.g. weekly, monthly) and check for the following:

• A spike towards the low end of the TBPR distribution
• Increasing number of deindexed linking root domains on a weekly/monthly basis
• Unchanged numbers of social metrics, remaining in very low levels

via How to Check Which Links Can Harm Your Site’s Rankings | SEOmoz.

The key to this entire mess is to not get bad links in the first place. And you’re not going to get bad links if you build a website, optimize the tags, and try to get natural links. You only get bad links when you want to get bad links. Right?

Headteachers should be able to impose increased fines on parents whose children miss school without a valid reason and the money will be docked automatically from child benefit if they fail to pay, a government adviser has said. via Truancy fines should be deducted from child benefit, says behaviour adviser | Education | The Guardian.

Let me get this straight, in the UK they pay parents a benefit to have kids, then force kids to go to government schools, and if the kids don’t go to the government school they charge a fine. That entire process is too complicated and worse borderline tyrannical. How does government managing this process help anyone, other than government?

“To a degree you really could make a case for them being exactly that,” Hammond says in the attached video, pointing to BMW’s engineering pedigree and a reputation for quality that assures you their cars will “be here in ten years.” via BMW: The Greatest Car Ever Made Says Top Gear’s Hammond | Breakout – Yahoo! Finance.

One thing is for sure, Germans are the best car makers today.

However, NY State will begin the process of setting one up thanks to a Gov Cuomo executive order. This is in the hopes that the Supreme Court won’t overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Act and the Federal government will come through with it’s promise of $2.6 billion.

The order sets up a market place for health insurance plans to compete and provide the best price to consumers. Cuomo’s order envisions that the exchange would be paid for with $2.6 billion in federal tax credits and eventually be self-sustaining by 2015. The order also calls for regional committees composed of members from the health, insurance and business community. via Cuomo issues executive order for statewide Health Exchange – YNN, Your News Now.

What concerns me the most is the idea that the program will be self-sustaining by 2015. The phrase self-sustaining can mean many things:

• the federal government will continue to fund it,
• New Yorker taxes will increase (again), and/or
• people are forced to participate.

Either way, it doesn’t sound like individual liberty. Nor does a state run health exchange sound like a free market. The only thing I hear is more government programs, regulations, spending, and taxes.

Why did Gov. Cuomo start this program so early when everything is up in the air?

Entrepreneurs don’t learn by thinking, they learn by doing. via How an Entrepreneur Imagines the World :: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing.

Entrepreneurs may think different because they like to do. What do you think?

Claim and optimize all your local profiles. Erroneous details in various profiles were costing one of Schepke’s clients—a family restaurant—significant tourist dollars: Google called it a grocery store; Yelp had it listed as an Italian restaurant; and Bing had an incorrect street address. via Search Engine Marketing – Five Steps to Improved Local Search ROI : MarketingProfs Article.

You can’t fit everything on that first screen so you’re left with what’s most important. You give users one way in and one way to accomplish tasks. Believe it or not – most users actually prefer this. It makes it easier to complete the task we landed on your site for because there are fewer distractions vying for our attention. via Mobile sites people like.

If you’re going to redesign your website I recommend you look at keeping it simple and clean. Offer the user one or two options and that should help you increase your conversions.

As a growing small business, it’s time to start thinking past paper-based or homegrown timesheet systems, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, or multiple installed time collection systems that produce inconsistent data. Without timesheet software, it is very difficult to understand project costs. via How Small Business Can Benefit from Time Tracking.

An even better analogy would be to consider time tracking a way of creating a recipe. To know how much sugar to put into the batch of cookie mix you need to know how much you put before. Sometimes the cookies were too sweet or not sweet enough. Once you get the right mix you can reproduce it on a regular basis.

Remember, your cocktail pitch doesn’t need to tell your entire story; it doesn’t even need to cover all the important points. A great pitch succeeds if it draws interest from the other person and gets them to want to know more. via How to Perfect Your Elevator Pitch.

This may seem obvious, but if you want to be taken seriously by consumers, it’s important to make your content visually compelling. via 7 Lessons From Content Marketing’s Greatest Hits.

A good design sends signals of quality and professionalism. Higher quality allows for a higher price premium; think of Lexus or Rolex. And a professional uses design to demonstrate his/her attention to detail.

Build out a list of branded terms and exclude traffic from these terms. This leaves you with your non-branded traffic. It’s important to know if your link building is resulting in more people entering the top portion of the funnel. via How your reports make your link building suck.

Non-brand terms means people are finding your products potentially for the first time. Having more visitors that never heard of your brand means more people in the future that will search for your brand.

• Sat 4/7 New York Mets at NY Mets (1-0) L 2 – 4
• Sun 4/8 New York Mets at NY Mets (2-0) L 5 – 7
• Mon 4/9 Houston Astros at Houston (2-1) L 3 – 8
• Tue 4/10 Houston Astros at Houston (3-1) W 6 – 4
• Wed 4/11 Houston Astros at Houston (3-2) W 6 – 3

via Atlanta Braves on Yahoo! Sports – News, Scores, Standings, Rumors, Fantasy Games.

What do you say when someone at work says, “No” to your suggestion?  You probably respond with a perfectly rational question like, “Why not?” Unfortunately, I’ve learned that rational questions are ineffective for motivating resistant people. Instead I’ve found that irrational questions actually motivate people better.

For example, imagine you’re a manager at a major PR firm and one of your reports balks at revising an important part of the next big campaign.  Instead of asking rational but ineffective questions, try the following 2 seemingly irrational questions:

1. How ready are you to make the revisions, on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 means not ready at all and 10 means totally ready?

Make sure she gives you a number. On the rare chance that she says, “1,” surprise her by saying, “What would turn it into a 2?” In telling you what it would take for her to become a 2, she reveals what she needs to do before she is able to make the revisions to the campaign. That is what you motivate her to do first.

2. If she picks a number higher than 2, ask, “Why didn’t you pick a lower (yes, lower) number?”

Question 1 seems irrational, because you’re asking, “How ready are you…?” of a person who just said, “No,” which we can assume means not at all ready.  However, most resistant people have some motivation that they keep from us.  If you ask, “Are you going to take my suggestion, yes or no?” they continue to keep their motivation hidden.  But if you ask them the “1-10” question, they’re much more likely to reveal their motivation by saying a 2 or a 3, which is far better – you’ve now moved from a “No” to at least a “Maybe.”

Question 2 seems really irrational, perhaps even absurd. It’s the opposite of the rational and expected question, “Why aren’t you more motivated?” which only breeds more resistance.  However, by asking Question 2, you’re asking her to defend why your directive to revise the campaign is even the slightest bit important to her (e.g., deep down, she knows getting over her defensiveness around critique is an important career goal) rather than to defend her excuses why she won’t do it (e.g., too busy).  The answers she gives lead her to rehearse the positive and intrinsic reasons for doing what you asked, which, in turn, dramatically increase the chances that she gets the project done.

via How to move people with two irrational questions | Daniel Pink.

Confused? I was too. But reread it a couple of times and I think you’ll get it.

Under Klein’s bill, a person breaking into a pharmacy with a deadly weapon would face up to 25 years in prison, up from the current 15-year maximum.

Stealing prescription drugs worth less than $1,000 would go from a misdemeanor to a felony punishable by up to four years behind bars.

The punishment would grow depending on the size of the illegal score, topping out at 25 years behind bars for anyone stealing more than $50,000 in prescription drugs.

via State Sen. Jeff Klein’s bill gets tough on drug thieves  – NY Daily News.

What are some alternatives to longer jail sentences and larger fines that you think might work?

The longtime congressman also denied that he was interested in passing off his seat to Wright in a political switcheroo: “I wish people would not infer that I’m crooked and I plan to develop some plan where you vote for me, and you’re going to get Keith in the morning,” Rangel said. “I mean, that’s not right.” via Charlie Rangel: Health Woes Won’t Sideline Me | New York Daily News.