This blog includes posts on lead generation, eMarketing, Web Marketing, SEO and other leading edge marketing techniques.
-Alan Blume
Search Engine Optimization and Long Tail Keywords
Posted on August 24th, 2010 by Alan Blume
Over the past year our company embarked upon an SEO experiment. We tested several techniques using numerous keyword phrases to determine how fast we could rise in the organic search engine results (the non advertisement results listed in a Google, Yahoo or Bing search). One of our primary target markets is insurance agencies, so we selected a dozen long-tail keyword phrases germane to this market. When we began this experiment, we were ranked very low, in some cases as low as page 10 on Google, in other cases we were simply unranked. Our goal was to rapidly reach page one on Google search results.
We began with a keyword analysis, determining which phrases we deemed most valuable to our marketing services agency and which keyword phrases had less competition. Long-tail keywords are typically three word phrases and more specific than a broad based single keyword. For example, “California Transportation Litigation” would be a good example of a long-tail keyword phrase, whereas “Litigation” would be a very broad keyword. “Insurance Agent Leads” would be another long-tail example while “Insurance” is another example of a broad and seemingly vague keyword.
Some of the long-tail keyword phrases we chose included:
- Insurance Agency SEO
- Insurance Agency Leads
- Trucking Agency Leads
- Trucking Agency Marketing
As of this writing we are ranked Google page one for all of these long-tail keywords. We currently appear as the #1 entry for the first three long-tail keyword phrases and we appear #2 for trucking agency marketing. Some of these terms are highly focused, with 100 to 200 searches per year; other keyword phrases we selected are searched thousands or tens of thousands of times per year. We appear on Google page one (and Yahoo for that matter) for many other of our selected long-tail keyword phrases. How long did this take? In almost all cases, Google page one rankings were accomplished in 90 days. We have also seen similar results for many of our B2B clients, which tend to be professional service companies, insurance agencies or B@B technology companies.
How is this accomplished? We approached our SEO experiment using both on page and off page optimization techniques. The on page techniques included the modification of:
- Page Title
- Description
- Keywords
- H1-H4 Tags
- Alt Image Tags
- Keyword Density
- Blog Integration
- Dynamic Content
There were many additional on page optimizations used, but the changes noted above are of critical importance. Off page optimization included ePublishing, directory submissions, link building, blog distribution, and social media marketing. There is almost no limit to the amount of content which can be generated outside of your website, but you have to start somewhere and then continue to invest in your content development. Though it may seem obvious, all of the off page optimization requires a link back to your website. More links is one of the many elements the search engines use when deciding which web sites to display in their organic search listings.
As of this writing, an increasing number of our new clients are arriving from the efforts noted above, with SEO, LinkedIn, ePublishing, and blogging now generating over 25 % of our new business activity. We believe that the list above will soon constitute 50% of the leads generated for our own business, and expect other companies to find a similar result over time. Many of these topics are covered in my recently released book, Your Virtual Success, available online and at all major bookstores.
www.startupselling.com www.alanblume.com www.yourvirtualsuccess.net
It’s All About Your Close Ratio
Posted on August 12th, 2010 by Alan Blume
Do you track the ratios of your prospects to presentations to proposals to closes? These simple ratios can offer tremendous insights into the health of your sales and marketing engine. Further, they can elucidate specific challenges in your business. For example, let’s say that you offer monthly web seminars which result in 100 registrants per month. Of these 100 registrants, 10 move further down your sales funnel (see blog entry called The Prospect Scorecard) and result in individual presentations (10%). Of these 10 presentations, five request proposals (50% of presentations or 5% of webinar registrants), and are deemed “proposal worthy” through your well defined Prospect Scorecard or other measuring system which your company has in place. Lastly, of these five proposals, two close, or 40% of proposals or 2% of the original 100 webinar registrants.
Now that you’ve established your ratios, are you happy with them? If you are, then you may want to increase webinar registrants, allowing more prospects to cascade down through your funnel. Or, perhaps you think that a 10% conversion rate from webinar registrants to individualized presentations is too low. You would then need to determine what should be done to influence that metric. For example, perhaps your webinars need a more compelling call to action, a special offer to move to an individualized presentation, or you could make it easier for the prospect to meet with you by offering an abbreviated one to one web meeting or conference call. There are actually many things you could try to refine your ratios, of course you have to have these in place to do so.
Your company now has simple and easily measurable metrics for your sales process. Extending these measurements to your marketing engine, in this particular case, can be as simple as measuring where webinar registrants arrived from (LinkedIn or other Social Network, ePublishing, eMail Marketing, Referral, etc.) and then tracking the resulting prospects through the sales funnel mentioned above. Many small businesses fail to measure these key metrics, which is really very simple to accomplish. We track all of these for our own sales and marketing efforts at StartUpSelling, Inc. You can read more about this on our website, or in my recently released book, Your Virtual Success: www.yourvirtualsuccess.net.
A Small Business Marketing Plan for the Web Centric Marketing Era
Posted on August 4th, 2010 by Alan Blume
Small Business Marketing Plan, Insurance Agency Marketing Plan
What type of marketing plan does your small business create each year? Is it a comprehensive and detailed plan that is 10 or 20 pages long or a more concise one to five pages? Is it part of an annual business plan or a five year strategic plan? Companies approach business planning, budgeting and marketing from a wide variety of perspectives. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to drill down to a marketing specific plan, then further to a web centric B2B lead generation plan.
There are many marketing related activities which fall under a small business marketing plan umbrella. Some of these (listed alphabetically) include:
- Association Memberships (Chamber of Commerce, etc.)
- Blogging
- Brochures
- Client Testimonials
- Club Memberships (Golf, Tennis, Other)
- Direct Mail
- eBrochures
- eMarketing
- ePublishing
- Events (for both clients and prospects)
- Networking Organizations
- Newsletter
- On-site Seminars
- Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)
- PR and Client Testimonial Creation
- Promotional Items
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Telemarketing
- Trade Shows
- Traditional Advertising (Magazines, Yellow Pages, Radio, TV)
- Web Seminars
- Website
- White Papers
That’s already a long list, and we’re just getting started. Small businesses can’t tackle all of the activities above, in fact, they should only focus on a few of these each year, and many would agree that they should focus on lead generation oriented activities which will help keep their pipelines full and active. Let’s review some of the better lead generation activities from the list above:
- Direct Mail
- eMarketing
- Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Telemarketing
- Traditional Advertising (Magazines, Yellow Pages, Radio, TV)
- Web Seminars
- Website
Granted, networking oriented activities can generate leads, though these should be pursued in the normal course of business in a manner most comfortable to the individual salesperson. Thus we are focusing on quantitatively oriented (easily repeatable and highly measurable) lead generation activities. This list is more manageable, but still needs to be culled to ensure proper focus on the respective lead generation activity. A decade ago, traditional advertising, telemarketing and direct mail might have been the preferred path for most businesses. Today, only one of those activities should remain on our list, and as you will see below, the remaining items are all web marketing centric.
- eMarketing/Web Seminars
- Pay Per Click (Google PPC Campaigns)
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogging, ePublising
- Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Telemarketing (for smaller profile prospects)
- Website
Our small business marketing list has now been culled to a manageable level. You may have noticed that eMarketing has been paired with web seminars. This is because many small business marketing experts find a higher B2B response rate to eMarketing initiatives when leveraging educationally oriented webinars as the primary call to action. SEO, search engine optimization for Small businesses, results in the organic display of your business website at the top of the search engine rankings (Google, Bing or Yahoo search engine results). You probably noticed that this is now bundled with blogging and ePublishing, since those elements are often necessary to achieve page one search engine results. Organic SEO is a gift that keeps on giving; it does not require fees every time a prospect clicks on your name. PPC, or Pay Per Click ads, appear at the top and side of the Google results, and require that your business pays anywhere from $1 to $5 per click, depending upon the competitiveness of the search term. My recommendations for a B2B lead generation, web centric plan often focuses on the following:
- eMarketing/Web Seminars
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Blogging, ePublising
- Social Media Marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Website
This is a manageable list for almost any business, and a cost effective outsource if the business lacks the internal expertise to accomplish these tasks. A professional up to date website is essential for any small business. The website should be optimized for your specific keywords (benefits, workers comp, truck insurance, etc.). Your small business SEO initiative may need to be regionalized or localized (workers compensation Massachusetts). Social media marketing, a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is fast and easy for most businesses, a full blown social media initiative would require a greater investment of time (creating and managing a group, offering content, responding to discussion groups, etc.). Blogging and ePublishing are essential and extremely helpful for most businesses. Fortunately businesses can often leverage their blog content and publish it in well known, online article directories. Lastly, a successful eMarketing and Web Seminar campaign can often yield the best results for small businesses. An ideal series might have 5,000 0r 10,000 targeted prospect emails combined with a monthly webinar. Be wary of email list brokers advertising inexpensive email lists. We’ve seen business lists where the first and last names are merged into one field and many of the emails are info@ or sales@ type emails, a definite problem when it comes to professional eMarketing. EMarketing is both an art and a science, businesses must ensure it is done properly, professionally and obey the CAN-SPAM act.
Web centric small business marketing is now a critical foundation for any small business wishing to grow, your business should be well on the way to implementing these initiatives. That said, don’t attempt to do too many activities at one time, you’re better off doing a few marketing activities really well than accomplishing a dozen in a haphazard manner.
For more information on small business marketing read Your Virtual Success: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Virtual-Success-Finding-Profitability/dp/1601631014
Are the days of B2B cold calling/telemarketing over?
Posted on July 27th, 2010 by Alan Blume
My answer to this question is, “it depends on the industry and prospect profile”. Telemarketing (or cold calling) can be very effective when properly approached and applied to a specific niche and B2B target profile. There are many newer methods of marketing B2B products and services, but highly targeted, niche cold calling can still prove effective for your B2B business. Ultimately, however, the days of cold calling will come to a close as eMarketing, Social Media Marketing, ePublishing and other web centric methods prove to be more effective and less expensive. But today, cold calling or outsourced B2B telemarketing can still be highly effective for certain niches and prospect profiles.
For example, one of our clients is a truck insurance agency located in the southeastern U.S. This insurance agency focuses on smaller trucking firms with 2 to 50 trucks, though most of their prospects fall within the 2 to 15 truck range. We currently provide them with an average of 6 appointments per week in only 10 hours of calling per week. We have seen the scenario repeatedly for transportation insurance agencies targeting smaller profile trucking companies, and, we’ve seen it for B2B clients which focus on a vertical niche, everything from sales consulting, to CPA firms, from training companies to cloud computing software solutions.
Though our preferred approach revolves around a fully integrated, comprehensive and web centric approach to marketing, we have found consistently high yield results for these vertically oriented companies, which have seen returns anywhere from 2X to 10X on their telemarketing investment. Cold calling can also be done on a tailored basis by sales people, calling high in their targeted prospect accounts, which combined with a personalized email can yield effective results. We describe the difference between salespeople’s cold calling and telemarketing from a numbers perspective. Our appointment setters are expected to yield about 25 calls per hour, documenting changes in position, direct phone number and of course delivering pitches along the way. This means that in 60 hours of calling per month, the phone is dialed about 1500 times, or 18,000 times per year when fully extrapolated. Sales professionals time is much better spent on other activities, they do not have the time or patience to deliver this volume. Obviously, telemarketing is not just about volume: a well defined and consistently refined script is essential, resulting in an appointment every two hours, which is subsequently very worthwhile to the salesperson, CPA, small business owner or producer (using insurance agency jargon).
Thus, in our opinion, though the days of telemarketing are dwindling for many B2B companies and industries, there are still instances where it is highly cost effective, if done professionally and properly, where high quality B2B telemarketing can yield cost effective results.
Should Smaller Agencies Focus on Marketing Plans or Lead Generation Plans?
Posted on July 9th, 2010 by Alan Blume
Is there a difference for small agencies when it comes to a marketing plan vs. a lead gen plan? How much should a small agency invest in marketing vs. lead generation, and which is more effective? Does your agency allocate a percentage of revenues to determine marketing spend each year? Do you have a formal budget or no budget at all? Do you create a formal marketing plan with measurable goals, and if so, what aspect of this plan is allocated toward lead generation? Or are you of the philosophy that it’s the producers’ job to dig up leads, after all, that’s why you pay them commission in the first place.
The answers to these questions can vary greatly by size of agency and type of agency, but here’s my perspective on smaller agencies, which I’ll identify as $5 Million in revenues and below. Most of these types of agencies have limited budget and bandwidth, and many don’t have a VP of Marketing (or a dedicated marketing person of any type). Some of these agencies create a formal marketing plan at the end of each year, and create a budget to accomplish their goals. For example, a $4 Million agency may allocate 1% to 10% of their revenues for marketing, representing a range from $40,000 to $400,000 (these numbers are all over the board with some agencies allocating almost nothing and others allocating more than 10%). This money is likely to be allocated across many purposes. Some of the marketing activities which agency CEO’s recently mentioned include:
- On site seminars for clients and prospects
- Event sponsorships
- Club memberships
- Telemarketing (in house and outsourced)
- Association sponsorships
- Branding and design projects
- Trade shows
- Updated Website
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- eMarketing & Web Seminars
- Social Media
- Newsletter
- Blogging & ePublishing
- Printed materials
Is there a logical order for all of the above “marketing initiatives”? How can a agency determine the relative importance of each of these? Should the typical small agency focus on an overall marketing strategy or a lead generation specific strategy? For small agencies I typically recommend a one page marketing plan, and that this marketing plan should be lead generation centric. Small agencies need to be able to change direction quickly, they need to be fleet footed and outmaneuver competition, including much larger organizations with bigger budgets and greater resources. Thus, a marketing plan created in the 4th quarter of last year, may need to be changed in the 2nd quarter of this year. The best way to do this is a one page, bulleted marketing plan. For example:
- Build targeted 3,000 prospect list with emails
- Invite prospects to a monthly webinar with a goal of 30 registrants
- Sales team to call all multiple opens and click throughs, registrants and attendees
- Meet with 12 prospects per month from this lead gen effort, proposals to 4 and close 2
- Cost for this program over 12 months: Approximately $25,000
Your marketing plan may continue on with a revised website and SEO project:
- Update look & feel of website
- Create Blog and integrate into website
- LinkedIn, Facebook and Social Media Profiles
- Refine SEO (Search Engine Optimization – your agency is organically listed at the top ff Google, Bing & Yahoo rankings)
- Post articles in online article directories (ePublish)
- Cost for this program over 3 months: Approximately $6,000
You may add a telemarketing project as a standalone, or to supplement the activities above:
- 10 hours of calls per week yielding 225 outbound calls
- 4 appointment quality leads per week
- 2 appointments that move to quotations
- 1 close on average per week
- Cost for this program over 12 months: Approximately $24,000
If all of the marketing activities above were accomplished in a period of one year, perhaps your agency allocated $55,000 toward lead generation centric marketing. If your agency is $4 Million in revenues, the lead generation plan above represents about 1.5% of your revenues. It’s important to measure the revenue generated by this investment. This can be done easily on a simple spreadsheet, comparing opportunities with closes. Ultimately you will be able to create a sales funnel with ratios including: Suspects, prospects, meetings, quotations, closes.
Leveraged in conjunction with a strong referral oriented lead generation program, this type of marketing is often the most effective for smaller agencies. If agencies decide to outsource this type of marketing, it’s easy to change direction quickly, moving from telemarketing to web seminar marketing for example. With limited funds and resources available, agencies need to make every marketing dollar count, and it’s important to have a simple and malleable marketing plan to help grow your premiums.
When is the Last Time You Read the US Constitution – Take the July 4th Quick Quiz
Posted on June 27th, 2010 by Alan Blume
When was the last time you read this?
When is the last time you (or your children) read the US Constitution, or for that matter, the Declaration of Independence? With our national birthday just around the corner, thinking about the Constitution seems particularly relevant. It’s great to go watch a parade, but you might find it truly worthwhile to take a little time and read our Constitution. If memory serves me correctly, I read it back in my college days for a class I took on constitutional law. Recently, however, I read a great book on my Kindle, called The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin. The Nine frequently referenced the articles and amendments of the US Constitution. So, after finishing The Nine, I decided to reread the Declaration of Independence and The US Constitution. I came away with two surprises: 1. The Constitution is a surprisingly short document considering all that it represents – those framers were clearly a brilliant group. 2. Even with the formality of the language of the times, you can really sense the pent up anger in the Declaration of Independence.
The real question is, how much do you know about the Constitution? If you’re curious, take this quick quiz (answers are below):
- How many Articles are there?
- How many Amendments are there (last one was in 1992)?
- What is Article 1 about?
- What is Article 2 about?
- What is Article 3 about?
- How many Amendments are there in the Bill of Rights?
- When was the Bill of Rights ratified?
- Which Amendment abolished slavery?
- Where would you find the famous quote, “WE hold these Truths to be self evident?
- How many states were required to ratify the Constitution?
- Bonus question: What is the Fifth Amendment about?
Some of the language in the Constitution seems crystal clear to me, other language seems cryptic. After reading through it (twice), it seems abundantly clear why the judiciary has so many perspectives of Constitutional right and wrong and the myriad of interpretational perspectives on the document. This document represents one of the most important, guiding principles of our everyday lives. When is the last time you or your children read the Declaration of Independence and The US Constitution? Answers to the quiz are below, if I made a layman’s error on these, I guess I’ll have to “plead the Fifth”. Feel free to send me comments, clarifications or corrections.
Answers: 1. (7) 2. (27) 3. (Legislative Branch) 4. (Executive Branch) 5. (Judicial Branch) 6. (10) 7. (1791) 8. (13th) 9. (Declaration of Independence) 10. (9) 11. (Shall not be compelled to be a witness against himself)
If you’re interested in reading something on a leading edge business topic, try Your Virtual Success (Career Press), my new book on web centric sales, marketing and business management. Available at all bookstores, Amazon and on the Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Virtual-Success-Finding-Profitability/dp/1601631014
If Someone Hands You a Scalpel, It Doesn’t Make You a Surgeon – You Should Think of Web Marketing in the Same Way
Posted on June 19th, 2010 by Alan Blume
There are many powerful marketing tools now available, everything from eMarketing engines and Search Engine Optimization Tools to ePublishing and Web Seminar Software. Any of these tools can be very helpful to your business, but placed in the wrong hands, 
they can be extremely dangerous. Not long ago, a CEO mentioned to me that they were sending out tens of thousands of emails through their eMarketing “platform” and they could do so very inexpensively. Their platform (let’s call it an integrated web site and eMarketing system) could send out as many emails as they wanted. Their provider suggested they contact some email list brokers where they could buy tens of thousands of emails. They even had some sample emails from other companies they could use.
Unfortunately, their email “blasts” of tens of thousands of emails, purchased from a list broker, resulted in no response. Literally, nobody responded to their offer. This is a good example of placing the aforementioned scalpel in the hands of a layperson. Placing this type of technology in the hands of untrained individuals is a recipe for failure, regardless of the ease of use of the application. This example is laden with huge issues:
- The email list they purchased looked like a low quality list, with first name, middle initial and last name all merged into one field, resulting in problematic personalization.
- The company was trying to “sell” something in their email – always try to educate or enlighten
- The email was graphically rich (a definite issue for many spam filters)
- Large scale email blasts often result in your prospects blocking your email address or in some cases your domain.
- They already burned their first opportunity to make a positive impression with all of these potential prospects
So before you hit the button and blast out 10,000 or 20,000 emails, and before you decide to run some of your own webinars:
- Carefully study emails which you receive and like – why are they good – why did you open it
- Attend webinars which sound interesting and relevant to you – how long are they – did you stay
- Read a book about these new web marketing topics – read a few
- Seek advice and guidance from experts in the field – surgeons get training and so should you
Make your web marketing operation safe and successful by combining advanced tools with knowledge and training to ensure the health of your program initiatives.
Webinar Tomorrow: Blogging, Social Media and SEO for Lead Generation & Growth
Posted on June 16th, 2010 by Alan Blume
Social Media Marketing for B2B Lead Generation
A brief, complimentary web seminar on Blogging, Social Media and SEO – New Marketing Tools for Lead Generation & Growth is open to registrants. We will review the new rules which apply to marketing and why sooner is better when it comes to social media marketing. Topics include SEO, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, ePublishing, Blogging andsocial media marketing – live presentation of the Ezine dashboard and content centric approach to marketing.
* Blogging for Leads
* ePublishing or Blogging – which is better and why?
* Search Engine Optimization – SEO or PPC
* Should my company Link, Friend or Tweet?
* Social Media Marketing or eMarketing for your business
June 17th at Noon ET: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/864983264
For more information: info@startupselling.com
Office Buildings Are Obsolete and Offshore Drilling is the Result
Posted on June 13th, 2010 by Alan Blume
Office Buildings Are Obsolete - "GoVirtual, Baby, Go Virtual"
These days, office buildings simply seem like an outdated concept, a horse drawn carriage in the age of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet, a stereo turntable in an iPod era. Of course towering skyscrapers and massive office buildings composed of brick and mortar, conference rooms and cubicles made sense at one time, but with the advent of pervasive internet connectivity and virtual meeting tools, these office buildings are rapidly becoming obsolete, resulting in unfortunate collateral damage like massive oil and gas consumption, unnecessary expense and wasted productivity. Office buildings, though seemingly innocuous, are one of the key catalysts causing us to use 350 million gallons of gas per day, and waste millions of hours of valuable time and productivity. Does is make sense for millions of white collar workers to spend an hour commuting into a city, searching for parking, scurrying across crowded streets to then spend 99 percent of their time working from their PC, talking on the phone, and communicating through email and on-line Web meetings?
Reducing the national commute is no longer a want; it is a clearly defined need as is evident by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling a mile down under the ocean illustrates the extreme lengths we as a society are willing to go to fuel our need for oil and gas. Why do we need so much oil, and why are we importing over 60% of the oil we need? Figures vary, but some, including the NRDC, estimate that passenger cars use up “40 percent of the oil consumed in America”. Many organizations are calling for improved fuel consumption, smaller cars, hybrid vehicles and carpooling. But I look at these suggestions, albeit good ones, as treating the symptoms but not the disease. We could easily cut passenger car fuel consumption in half (or perhaps by as much a 75%), if companies adopted a virtual approach to business, abandoning the tiring and tedious commute and embracing a home office based, internet model.
According to Wikipedia, “Estimates suggest that over 50 million U.S. workers (about 40% of the working population) could work from home at least part of the time yet, in 2008, only 2.5 million employees (not including the self-employed) considered home their primary place of business.” Yes, there are millions of telecommuters and home office based businesses now operating out of their respective homes, but this could and should be increased tenfold.
There are three major factors which need to be addressed to foster a dramatic increase the numbers of home based workers.
1. A new management style will need to be embraced by companies; management needs to be focus on results and not on the close daily supervision and behaviors of individual employees.
2. Workers need to learn how to work from home and get comfortable with the home based office concept.
3. A shift in tools toward cloud computing and away from traditional enterprise applications may be required.
Of these three factors, the first two represent a change management paradigm shift which as we all know can be very challenging and time consuming. The latter is a technology shift, more readily and rapidly addressable, almost everything this writer does is now cloud computing based. My days are now comprised of a handful of Skype calls, several web meetings, eMarketing, SEO (search engine optimization), website makeovers, blogging and Social Media Marketing and Networking, all done in the internet cloud.
Are office buildings and all they represent the underlying cause for the BP Deepwater Horizon oil well leak in the Gulf of Mexico? Can we rapidly curb our appetite for oil by adopting a virtual approach to business and commuting? Will the echoes of the Michael Steele and Sarah Palin slogan “Drill, Baby, Drill” someday change to “Go Virtual, Baby, Go Virtual”? I think virtual business and management will be an evolution rather than a revolution, behavioral change lags technological change. This change, however, is happening and it is a change for the better, a more eco-friendly and lifestyle friendly model, and certainly a change for increased productivity and decreased fuel consumption. As this evolution unfolds, what will happen to all those office buildings? I believe they will simply be repurposed, whether they morph to condos, research facilities and light industrial (yes there will still be jobs which require onsite venues), warehouse space, and community, athletic or recreational facilities. Or perhaps they will slowly evolve to some purpose beyond our current scope of understanding or speculation. Regardless of what shall happen to these office building obelisks, encompassing both impressive and generic icons of an anachronistic business model, I think many would agree that it seems like an inherently bad idea to continue to foster a commuter centric model which requires millions of white collar workers to burn oil, time and money in this virtual age.
OK, I’ll say it, “Go Virtual, Baby, Go Virtual”.
For more information, read Your Virtual Success (Career Press), available at Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble or Indie bookstores (or online). Or go to one of my websites: http://www.yourvirtualsuccess.net, http://www.startupselling.com. Has your company, agency, or professional services firm started the transition to a more efficient and productive virtual sales, virtual marketing or virtual business model?
