Marketing is not just a department down the hall Here’s a story. A couple of weeks ago I was working in Eugene, Oregon. It was lunch time and rather than eat at the hotel, I decided to let “Yelp” (a great free app for your iPhone) do the deciding. I plugged in restaurants and took off for a hole in the wall joint with great gyros. The directions took me to a “locals only” joint with a walk up counter and a few seats out on the sidewalk. I placed my order and started taking in the ambiance. One side was plastered with pictures of Chicago, an Albanian flag and dozens of grease drenched documents produced by local patrons who had consumed mass quantities of the lamb specialty. The opposite wall displayed posters announcing local festivals, concerts and Independence Day events. A table in the corner held a collection of business cards; everything from termite terminators to tae kwon do masters – and one very special card. Photo: www.NathanWallner.com The card carried thi...

Getting There First and Don’t Be a Problem Solver Special Note: While this method solves the problem, it requires little skill or forward thinking. This story takes 3 minutes to read. If you are in a time crunch, skip the story and jump to the moral of the story. A few years ago we studied the Mechatronics Industry, which is the marriage of mechanical systems (gears, belts, electric motors and hydraulics) and electronic systems (computers, PLC’s, sensors and digital screens). Along the way, our work discovered mechanical distributors were almost always the first to learn of customer projects. Why? Customers designed mechanical portions of their system ahead of the electronic portion. In all but a few situations, the mechanics were engineered 60-90 days ahead of electronic controls. We believed this gave the person selling both the mechanical components and electronic controls a competitive advantage over a “controls only” seller. Knowing about and working on solut...

Independence, Freedom and Adios Autonomy It’s Fourth of July Week in the United States.   Independence Day, America Day and the Fourth of July are all names marking American Freedom.   The distant beat of John Philip Souza patriotic melodies mingle with the steel gray smoke of fireworks in the distance.   Folks, kids and cousins gather at the local park, braving the summer heat, grass stains and mosquitoes. To steal a phrase from my pal, Tom; “That’s the way we roll in America.   We’re celebrating Freedom and if you don’t like it-- tough.”   Under this great backdrop of Freedom, Independence and Liberty, I would like to raise a discussion.     Electronic Privacy in the Sales Department The word is out.   The government has accessed the phone records and electronic data of all of us.   Deep within some top-secret vault in a non-descript suburb of Washington DC, they have our text messages, our emails, and other good...