Discover the Yin and Yang of marketing alliances

by Susan Solovic There is strength in numbers and if you can form alliances with other businesses, you can grab some additional marketing strength. Earlier this year, I outlined a system and some tools you can use to find other businesses that are wooing the same social media audience as you’re trying to get onboard. Today, I want to suggest another very simple way to find companies that might be amenable to forming an alliance with your business. Simply put: If you’re a product supplier, contact the companies who supply related services to your customers. And if you’re a service provider, contact
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4 Ways to Build Trust with Customers That Can Transform Your Business

by Susan Solov “Make hundreds of dollars a week just by stuffing envelopes.” Remember that tiny ad that used to run regularly in virtually every newspaper’s classified ad section? I suppose a fair number of people answered the ad, otherwise they would have gone extinct quite quickly. However, most of us didn’t take the bait. Why? Because we didn’t have any trust in it. Trust may be the single most important foundational element in a business relationship, and with so many business relationships starting from the Internet today, knowing how to build trust with customers and prospects via the digital
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Supplier Inclusion: The Shift is On

Supplier Inclusion: The Shift is Onby Kenton Clarke by Kenton Clarke Southport, CT / –Several events in recent months around the idea of an inclusive supplier and workforce base driving revenue should resonate with diversity practitioners. We have seen C-level executives at Wal-Mart, Hewlett Packard and General Mills take strong positions on inclusion with their suppliers. In all cases, these major brands demanded inclusion within the workforce from their major suppliers as a requirement of doing business with them. Note, this isn’t about ownership attributes of their supplier partners, but more about an inclusive workforce that will perform services and
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Supplier Diversity Food For Thought Part II

Supplier Diversity Food For Thought Part IIby Kenton Clarke by Kenton Clarke In a previous article I wrote titled “Spend Doesn’t Matter”, I highlighted the matrix driven goals followed by most corporations for their Supplier Diversity initiatives. For those unfamiliar with the term Supplier Diversity, “it is a business program amongst Fortune 1000 companies that encourages the use of privately-held companies owned by historically under-utilized businesses when purchasing goods/services.” The fundamental goal of Supplier Diversity is to include businesses owned by diverse people in the supply chain of Fortune 1000 companies to build wealth within those communities. My objective is
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Sit to Stand to Success: Ergonomic Health Leads to Longer Lives and Higher Productivity

Buzz around the office is that sitting has become the newest workplace hazard. Recent research on the effects of sitting for long periods of time on the body all reach similar conclusions: that sitting for more than 3 hours a day causes accumulative damages to your musculoskeletal system1.  In addition, the negative effects of sitting operate independently of moderate to vigorous physical activity around those hours of being sedentary. If you work in an office or spend the majority of your working hours sitting at a desk, this news may seem like a nagging concern you’re powerless against. What can
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