Productive Insights

Generation Y and the Millennium Generation communicate quickly and often with multiple people simultaneously. They are adept at social networks, Blackberries and Instant Messaging. If you have observed your own children carrying on instant message dialogues with several recipients while they type their homework, listen to music, and talk over their shoulders to whomever else is in the room, you

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We’ve all heard the saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” and we’ve no doubt used it to inspire our troops or ourselves from time to time. And why not? It’s a tried-and-true power-of-positive-thinking gem. Even better, it’s versatile. It can be said with a smile or a frown. It throws down a dangerous-sounding non-challenge without placing

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Are your customers buying less and less as the economic news gets worse and worse? Notice that we didn’t say the economy is getting worse-just the news. But that’s another story. And it really doesn’t matter because your bread is buttered at the micro-economic level, not the macro. What can you do now to keep your top line on top?

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Our clients are showing us another side of the nation’s tarnished economic coin, and this side is brighter. They’re finding productive ways to make use of this downturn to keep their companies moving up. What does that bright side look like? To us, it looks like opportunity. Opportunity #1: Standing Out from Your Competition. While their competition is circling the wagons,

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Economic slow-downs usually mean we must work harder and smarter to stay busy. If we’re not busy, we need to be busy getting busy and generating revenue now. 1. Get Ahead of the Trends or Just Keep Up. Do you have the kind of business that could “ride the wave” of a trend? Or, can you make a few changes and

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We really struck a nerve last month with our column, “Upside of the Downturn?” That positive look at our negative economy must have tapped a can-do, fight-back spirit that successful companies share. Response was strong and positive. So, here we go again. But this time, instead of a list, we’ll focus on a single strategy called “disintermediation.” Yes, it sounds

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Productive Strategies turns 16 this month: July 2009. And, yes, we’re very happy to be here. But we didn’t do it by ourselves. We had plenty of help from people like you, and we learned more than a few lessons along the way. We’d like to share five (and a half) of those lessons and recognize some of the individuals

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What’s the weakest link in your business development process? What, if changed, would give you the best odds of getting the most business from current customers and new prospects? If you don’t know, you’re not alone. With their heads down and putting out fires, business owners and senior executives sometimes have trouble seeing the forest for the trees. When their

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You have a great product. You have loyal customers. But do your customers know all of the problems you solve with your products or services? Do your employees know which products or services best solve your customers’ problems? Think of product training as an extension of your marketing program. Your audience is already persuaded to use what you have to

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What’s the one thing Barack Obama and John McCain agree on? That’s the question we’re asking the press and the public as we launch a public relations campaign on behalf of one of our clients. The timely campaign is designed to help our client gain visibility by leveraging the candidates’ recent “debate” on how best to save energy. Our client,

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