Have you ever stopped to consider a prospect’s view of your firm? Their first contact is usually with Sales. So it is of critical importance who is selling your product. Start ups and those who have been in business awhile have different issues. In a start up, I’ve heard a few owners/bottle washers say there …

The best way to begin a government grant proposal is with a great kick-off meeting. If the meeting goes well, you will inform, motivate, and focus the grant proposal team on the task ahead. The proposal team is comprised of the people who will be working on the grant application. They should include the Proposal …

Making a Communication Plan for Communicating Change Part 3: For Organizations You have probably heard that you should have a communication strategy in place for major change. But what does that look like, who is involved, and how do you do it? Timing is also a very important factor. For example, when two major airlines …

During my career, I have been given a few nuggets of wisdom from people with whom I have made contact. Upon truly understanding their meaning, those words shaped a paradigm shift in my thinking that transformed the way in which I did my work or lived my life. Other pieces of wisdom I heard simply reaffirmed what I already knew, but perhaps provided a unique way in which to describe or communicate the concept. One of those concepts seems to be rarer today than when my career started and I thought I would share it with you.

Webinars are often used in the business training environment, but it is a newer version of that webinar idea with a host that is taking over when it comes to online/teleconferencing training: the teleseminar, which can be used to provide information, training, or promote or sell products to group of people interested in a particular …

A new national study of nonprofit executive leadership provides a keen insight into and useful benchmarking statistics on the state of nonprofit leadership. Daring to Lead 2011 is a joint project of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and the Meyer Foundation. The report is based on responses from over 3000 executive directors and follows similar studies completed in 2001 and 2006.

No matter if you have a small business or a large business, you can run a social media contest and achieve viral results.

Every business has competitors for its customers, who, after all, get to choose. Most business plans only focus on existing competitors. While that’s necessary, it’s not sufficient. You also need to look at the underlying structure of your industry, and assess the extended rivalry that exists within that structure. One way to do that is …

Figuring out how to be a great boss can be difficult especially when you’re managing so many different people. This is what people have said in my workshops on employee engagement. when asked: “What makes a great boss” – someone who can lead and motivate you? Seven Principles of Good Supervision 1. Tell me my …

In today’s world, a Technical Writer wears many hats and possesses many traits. A Technical Writer will wear hats as an Interviewer, Researcher, Analyst, Editor, and Tester, just to mention a few. The one trait they all have in common is that they must be extremely detailed. The Technical Writer has to be a detail-oriented …