For anyone that had read my column for any length of time knows, I am a HUGE proponent of email marketing. I have often said that email is an invite into your neighbor’s living room. Other types tend to be more of a “swing by if you are in the neighborhood” offer. With email, you have a captive audience and they are reading your email because they are interested in what you have to say… or to sell. But are you engaging them?

First impressions are everything. It is crucial to make the best first impression you can. I can’t begin to count the times in my career when (for some reason or another) I dropped the ball on a first impression—maybe I didn’t call back…

"Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God." ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle.

You probably think of yourself as a travel agent, travel advisor,  a travel counselor or a travel planner or some variation thereof.  People entrust you with their vacations, their dreams, travel plans, their travel ambitions. You, in turn, access the tools at hand and make your clients' dreams come true. Your tools are your experience, your relationships with suppliers, your sense of detail and customer service. Every now and then, however, maybe you glimpse that you are something more than a travel agent, counselor or planner. Sometimes you might just sense that you pass right over into the realm of the magician - that ability to transform travel from a trip into an…

One of the problems small businesses face on an ongoing basis is their lack of consistency. Their marketing efforts are stop and go. Their sales strategies are hit or miss. Their customer service levels are warm and cold.

Why this is the case can be explained quite easily. In the majority of cases, they have no system to follow. They are doing the best they can, whenever they can. They have put aside any commitment to following a step-by-step procedure and replaced it with putting out fires. Easy to understand, but counter-productive just the same.

Perhaps it is time for a challenge. Let me see if I can but a temporary stop to your haphazard approach and replace it with a few maneuvers designed to get you…