Successful Soup

Have you ever heard someone say "We don't need marketing, we can't even handle the sales we have." While having a lot of business right now is indeed a blessing, your competition is doing anything but sitting still.

"Marketing must be as natural and routine as making payroll, paying taxes, and taking out the trash," says marketing guru Lauron Sonnier. "You have to keep stirring the pot."

What the heck is a Picayune?

We love talking about football, so when the Saints won the Superbowl, I went to nola.com, the official website of the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune. It got me thinking, just what is a picayune? At first I thought it was based on pica (say pie-kah), a unit of print size measurement (which is 1/6 of one inch). It turns out to something totally else, read more after the jump to Wikipedia.

The Deck is Dead....

How many presentations have you been to where the well-meaning speaker gave you a photocopy of the PowerPoint presentation? The most effective use of PowerPoint is to present visual information to a group that backs up what the speaker is saying. So many times, you get a poorly-copied black & white version (or deck) of the presentation -- often stapled in the wrong corner (what’s up with that?) Many times you would dutifully cart it back to your office or cube or recycling bin….

We met with an existing client today and created a “leave-behind” presentation book. It contained the information that we shared in the meeting, plus some extras. It was very easy – and cost effective – to do and they seemed to really appreciate it. So next time, instead of a deck, think about what you want your audience to remember and leave that behind.