Ron Johnson, CEO of JC Penney, is in the hot seat due to a $552 million reported Q4 2012loss and the company’s core customers taking flight into the arms of competitors. Sales were down during the crucial holiday season by 28% year-over-year. In 2011, Johnson rode in on his white horse from Apple, set to completely revamp the stagnant Penney brand. He worked under Jobs as the SVP of Retail Operations where he pioneered the experience of the Apple retail storeand the Genius Bar. Before that, Johnson was vice president of merchandising for Target and responsible for the booming success [...]

A new book by our writing and speaking colleagues, Tom Searcy and Henry DeVries, was released today, titled How to Close A Deal Like Warren Buffett. [read more about this new book below] Warren Buffett didn’t become one of the world’s wealthiest individuals on his investment instincts alone. Buffett is a master dealmaker. As a dealmaker he has built his company, Berkshire Hathaway, into an empire that includes Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, GEICO, Fruit of the Loom, and dozens and dozens of other companies. How to Close A Deal Like Warren Buffett – Lessons from the World’s Greatest Dealmaker is a [...]

Good websites are the heart and soul of any company’s success. They tell you customers about your services and how to contact you.  But how do you make your website great? These basic tips allow you to show your company’s personality and create a great environment for your potential customer. Color: Does your company have a cool logo or very specific colors? Integrate these into your website design in a creative way. A popular technique is to use the colors of the company logo as the background and text of the website. Customer will more easily recognize a consistent pattern/color/ [...]

LinkedIn has quickly become one of the most popular social networking sites, specifically in the professional world. LinkedIn is used for finding jobs, giving advice, and it can even be used to manage and nurture your quality leads through the sales funnel. Not only can you now put a face to a name, you can basically see a person’s entire professional life summed up on one page – convenient! Although LinkedIn users can share interests and activities on their profile page, perhaps one of the most valuable pieces of information you can obtain from their LinkedIn profile actually has nothing [...]

Pinterest is growing rapidly — it’s now the #3 social networking site in the United States, and it’s also becoming a leader for sales as a referral site. Referrals from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy than from any other site, and orders are averaging at $80 compared to Facebook’s average of $40. With such a high number of followers (and potential customers), you can’t afford to ignore it. So, how do you optimize your presence on such a visually-based site? You can start by following the steps below (as adapted from an infographic by Socially Sorted), happy pinning! Plan ahead of time Don’t just jump [...]

With inbound marketing, attracting visitors is only half the battle. Sure, you want to bring as many visitors to your page as possible. However, you also want to make sure that those visitors can and will turn into customers or clients. So, how do you do that? First, you need to know how to efficiently and accurately monitor your visitors online behavioral cues. Online behavioral cues basically consist of each action that a visitor performs on your page and within your creative online campaigns. Online behavior cues that your should monitor: Website click-throughs- what does a viewer click on when visiting [...]