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Portland and Vancouver Small Business Blog

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Resources for Women (and men?) Entrepreneurs

Published in July 2nd, 2008
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy, Events
2 Comments

As I mentioned in a previous post, I attended the nationwide Microsoft women entrepreneur’s event called Vision to Venture a couple of months ago in Redmond, WA. Much of Vision to Venture was recorded and Microsoft have now made the video available online. There were some excellent speakers including our own Duct Tape Marketing founder, [...]

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What Can We Learn from Women Entrepreneurs

Published in May 12th, 2008
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy
No Comments

My friend and fellow coach, Matthew Scott (Life’s Work Group Blog) has started an interesting conversation about what men should learn from women entrepreneurs.
The question arose from reflecting on our participation in the Microsoft Office Live Small Business conference for women entrepreneurs called Vision to Venture. There were over 450 women in attendance at the [...]

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Are you thinking big enough?

Published in May 10th, 2008
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy
No Comments

I spent the day at Microsoft’s Vision to Venture Women Entrepreneur’s conference yesterday. Yes, I know I’m a man but who really could turn down spending a day with 400 intelligent and talented business women?
Actually I was there as a Duct Tape Marketing Coach in support of John Jantsch who was one of the speakers. [...]

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Creating Your Sales Prospecting Plan - Strategic Alliances

Published in January 30th, 2008
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy, Sales
No Comments

 
As you put together your sales prospecting plan, give some thought to strategic alliances. Working with a other companies who have

Complementary products or services
And target the same customers

can be a win win for growing leads, referrals and personal introductions. The way it works is that you are leveraging each other’s sales and marketing efforts. [...]

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Small Business PR

Published in December 17th, 2007
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy, Communications
No Comments

My experience is that few small businesses do much in the way of PR. It is largely an afterthought and so no wonder that when they do give it a try they are not successful. To make matters worse, many small business owners are “product centric”. While it is understandable that they are excited [...]

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Top Management Can Actually Help

Published in December 4th, 2007
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy, Sales
No Comments

I read an interesting article in this month’s Marketing Management. It was about a study recently published by Rodrigo Guesalaga of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School that looked at the involvement of top level management in closing sales deals.
For small companies, often the top level management is the sales manager and the finance manager and [...]

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Made in the USA Good for Small Businesses

Published in November 29th, 2007
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Social trends
No Comments

This month’s Marketing News reports that an August Gallup poll reveals that 72% of American consumers now pay more attention to which country produces the goods they buy. Sixty-five percent say that they make an effort to avoid products bought in China and expressed a willingness to pay more for goods made in the USA.
Most [...]

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How Important Are Values in Business?

Published in February 16th, 2007
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy, Marketing Strategy
No Comments

On Tuesday I went to the Oregon Chapter of the American Marketing Association Luncheon. Dan Harbison, Internet Marketing Manager, of the Portland Trail Blazers was the speaker. His topic was “Trail Blazers on the Courts – and on the Web” and he duly explained the Trail Blazers’ web strategy and what they were trying to [...]

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Delegation For Business Survival

Published in February 14th, 2007
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy
No Comments

John Jantsch in a recent Duct Tape Marketing Blog entry made an interesting point about how lack of delegation can stifle the growth of a business. The gist of his point is that not all tasks in a business are of equal value and if you can hire or outsource less important tasks. You can then focus your time on the higher value tasks and thereby generate more income.

I have seen the truth of this a few times myself. Before I decided to open Market Accelerators, I considered buying a small business……

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Cannibalize Your Own Sales?

Published in September 6th, 2006
Posted by Michael in Business Strategy
No Comments

I recently read an interesting article in Fast Company about how Wal-Mart and GE are deliberately planning to kill their sales of light bulbs. Its not that they don’t want to sell light bulbs. They have recognized that new lighting technology will eventually replace traditional light bulbs so they would rather do the replacing [...]

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The blogs I read

    • This random selection from my daily reads changes each time the page is refreshed.

    • Duct Tape Marketing Blog
    • Portland's Finest Advertising Blog
    • Small Business Building Blocks
    • Portland Small Business Blog
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