The P-Cube takes its strategic priorities (we hope) from the C-Suite so you may find some of the hot buttons for procurement in that information. If you can make general information about your industry or product category available in the form of white papers, by-lined articles, primers or presentations, you can win hearts and minds in P-Cube Land and position your company as a thought leader. You have to pity sales people in the summertime. What with all the golf days, baseball games and other client entertainments they barely have time for a manicure. An ugly pen and pencil set? MORE >>

They’ll take a fair bit of abuse and are usually eager to eat with grown-ups, but be warned: they don’t always know their limitations and may end up producing information from an orifice that isn’t exactly media trained. When my friend the sales director blew me off for lunch the other day, I wasn’t surprised. I’m really sorry but someone just spotted a product manager on the fourth floor,” she gushed like a drunk birder. I need to corner that slippery little *^#@?%, m not talking about sales engineers or solutions consultants or product marketing managers here. Wind-up Evangelists. MORE >>

Give the GeekLords some money and ask them to build you an automated responder system that kicks out something the same day someone reaches out for material or information. Last rant on email, I promise (well, at least until someone sends me something stupid again).  On our journey to become the Sally Field of Email Marketing, this week I want to revisit the notion of the Sacred Inbox. As with most other sacred places, if you observe a few rules and try to act like a decent human being, you’ll not have any trouble. Here are the three  rules: Be relevant. Don’t waste anyone’s time. MORE >>

lot of dashboards fling information into the universe without much context. The second part of our look at the horrors of marketing dashboards and how to drag them through the first years of their lives and afterlives. Part One is here. Make it Meaningful. You’re a marketer. Life is at its crazy best when everyone is looking but nobody is really seeing. That’s why we like complex media schedules, stacks of sell sheets and pretty product boxes – it’s evidence of our incredible ability to get stuff done, whether or not it was difficult. Benchmarking adds meaning. Design It. Maybe ten? MORE >>

Inform them at the end of the interview that even though the lousy job description says senior manager, they thought it over and it’s really more of an analyst role. 'I am not ashamed to admit that pivot tables terrify me. love that pivot tables exist and I am just enough of a data geek that I can pivot data until it throws up faster than a toddler with a corn dog. But only if someone builds the initial table for me. Since I only really need to create a pivot table for myself once a year or so, I have to re-learn how to do it every single time. blame HR. But that didn’t happen. MORE >>