Deadlock is to dealmakers what cliffhangers are to TV couch potatoes — frustrating yet compelling, as the impasse challenges each side’s negotiating maturity, skill, and acumen. This document by Patricia Berry offers 10 key methods for jump-starting a stalled exchange.

What's your agency's standard for quality? It seems unrealistic to expect quality standards of 100% . . . after all, nobody's perfect. Wouldn't life be a lot easier and less stressful if everyone accepted a certain amount of predictable human frailty and built in a margin for error? It could even be called something impressive and positive sounding-'acceptable quality level,' for example.

11 SUREFIRE TACTICS TO GAIN CONTROL OF RECEIVABLES by Ken Buehler If you have a receivables problem, now is the best time to contain it. Most agencies with receivables problems believe th...

Referring to Wal-Mart's upcoming redesign of its Web site, one analyst said it will give retailing a "jolt" and another said it will "change Internet retailing." Evie Black Dykem, of Forrester Research, Inc., said, "It will be the shot heard round the retail world." When the world's largest retailer stakes its claim on the Internet, many predict that life will never again be the same. "The power to navigate the world at the click of a mouse is a force that is transforming our lives like none before," wrote the editors of Business Week. A few paragraphs later, they added, "Anyone with a computer is a citizen of the world-and a richer world at that."

There's nothing better for business than a booming economy. Unfortunately, it often encourages faulty thinking and spawns erroneous ideas. When sales are strong and profits meet projections, we're quick to take the credit. When things go sour, external forces get the blame.
A good economy tends to mask distorted thinking and inappropriate ideas. For example, personal computer sales have been drifting downward, even while prices have been dropping. Manufacturers are petrified. Out of near desperation, they jack up power to a sizzling 500 MHz to try to capture customer attention. Just as this happens, free PCs appear. In the midst of all this, one company rediscovers itself. To IBM's credit, it figured out what business it's in: solutions.

A CPA firm spends $11,200 on a Web site that attracts only a handful of visitors. An insurance agency invests $80,000 in an advertising campaign and no one sees the ads. An alternative health clinic sends out 8,000 direct mail fliers and gets 26 responses. A manufacturer spends $28,000 on an attractive brochure that no one uses.

14 TIPS FOR SENDING EFFECTIVE PRESS RELEASES by John Hewitt Know whom to send it to, not just where. Find out who the editor or reporter is for the section you want your release to a...

Becoming accustomed to a growing economy is easy and dangerous. Although there are always pockets of problems, we forget that success is often more the result of a good economy than our business acumen. If everyone else is doing well, our major challenge becomes how to pull ahead of the pack. Unfortunately, many business people tend to get a bit lazy-and that's when we can get caught.
There are ways to become more successful, keep business booming, and give companies the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage. Here are 15 ways to develop an extra edge:

'So dawn goes down today, nothing gold can stay.'
Robert Frost
'There are no more power elites.'
Manuel Castels in The Information Age
The painfully obvious implication of these quotes can be seen in the business world: IBM pulls its PCs out of retail venues because it no longer considers them profitable. The Wall Street Journal reported that in 1998, there were $301 billion in sales via the Internet, while the manufacturing sector did $350 billion in overall business. It took the Internet roughly 36 months to reach this figure; manufacturing needed 150 years.

19 TIPS FOR GETTING RISK SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED We subscribe to the 'win-win' theory of negotiating when placing business with our company underwriters. The placement has to be '...