'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.

AGENCY FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT: CONTROL EXPENSES AND BUILD YOUR BOTTOM LINE by Sharon Cunningham Proven ways to increase potential earnings and investment value of your business. You might...

There may come a time when your agency's communications needs exceed the capabilities of in-house personnel. You want to concentrate on producing new business, developing products, and servicing clients. Who has the time and expertise to create newspaper or radio advertising-or perform the myriad public relations functions necessary to keep your agency in the public eye?

CYCLE-UP YOUR MARKETING by Nanci Evarts Check out these solutions to soft-market woes. Shifts in the marketplace are either heralded by agents and brokers with general e...

DIVIDE SALES DUTIES INTO MARKETING AND SELLING Some CSRs have trouble marketing because they confuse it with selling. The whole concept of persuading a customer to sign an application for a policy ca...

Marketing may be second-nature in large companies, but smaller firms often have a tough time implementing, managing, and monitoring an effective marketing strategy. The 'marketing director' title is often conferred on the person designated to answer requests for sales literature, or given as an afterthought to the sales manager (who thinks that marketing is just another way of spelling s-a-l-e-s).

MARKET RESEARCH 101 -- DEFINING YOUR BUSINESS by Stephen Flowers Plenty of noise blurts about the value of service to an independent agency. Industry pundits keep repeating that su...

It seems as if we all need a good, old-fashioned whack on the head to get our attention. This is a moment when businesses need to connect with the business end of a two-by-four.
Change is in the wind. If there's one lesson the last decade or so has taught us, it's that there's a new economy, and it's global, integrated, and interdependent.

SUCCESS STORY MARKETING by E. Al Diamond Last week, I got a notice from my real estate broker announcing that she had just sold another house in my neighborhood. Then I realized that...

THE AGENCY 'X-FACTOR' by Al Diamond Why some agencies struggle to succeed, while others glide to success. It seems that we constantly ask ourselves...