The world of business is changing by leaps and bounds thanks to the growth of the use of technology in everyday life. The emphasis today is on speed, speed, and even more speed. The reason for this great stress on speed? It is the fear that some other competitor might walk off with a lucrative business deal.

Photo credit: Paul Hammond
As competition continues to heat up in the world of business, as rival companies are born, merged or divided, and as newer and newer innovations lead to the rise of unique …

I used to work in an office. Well I still work in an office, it’s just in my house. Working from home has its advantages but it also has its draw backs. One of the first issues I faced was a lack of a fax machine. Lets face it we still live in a paper based world on many levels and many companies do not embrace a paper free workplace. Contracts, forms, applications all need to be filled out on paper and faxed around.
I think I have a functional home …

I was invited to use an email tool called Xobni. The application is still in Beta so using the application is by invitation only (See invite below). It was recommended to me by an engineer and I figured if someone more geeky than me uses this tool, then it is worth taking a deeper look at.
Xobni Insight is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that offers effortless email management and provides instant access to the most important information in your email.
After a quick install, you’ll see the new Xobni toolbar appear …

My desk is a mess. Though I clean it on a weekly basis, by Friday afternoon when I get ready to close up shop, the desk is cluttered again. Inevitably as my week goes on, I accumulate a pile of documents, some extra notes and other random items that were necessary at one point but never seemed to get put away throughout the week. There must be a way to keep the desk clutter free and still manage to keep it an effective workspace.
I wasn’t able to find one decent …

As a sales manager, you probably attend more meetings in a week than a squirrel has nuts stored for the winter. Meetings are the bane of any leader. The time they sap has been well documented and Dilbert has covered the humorous aspects of their drudgery from every angle. Which is why meetings are a huge opportunity for you to shine, says Brian Tracy, a leading consultant on personal and professional development and author of Speak to Win (AMACOM, 2008). Consider the following story.
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Does that title sound like a gimmick? It’s not. It’s about the numbers. If you truly want to double your sales, you simply need to double a key aspect of your sales performance, asserts Stephan Schiffman, sales trainer and prolific author, in his newest book, Sales Essentials (Adams Media, 2008). His advice is rooted in the theory that when you measure and focus on a certain area, you’ll see improvement in that area. Here, he says, are five ways you can double your sales:
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There are many options out there for a customer relationship manager (CRM) available. I guess they all have advantages and disadvantages but I have grown accustomed to SalesForce and have no issues with it. Besides using it for work to manage all my accounts and prospects, I also have a personal account that is available to anyone for free.
SalesForce has done a good job keeping up with the needs of there corporate customers by adding new features and having a consistent update pattern that they make visible to SalesForce admins. …

It’s Q1 and if you’re in sales you are starting with a clean slate. Well unless you were that bad in 2007 then you need to make up for a bad Q4. For most of us though January is a great time of the year and when all the stress for the year comes back to a mild simmer. Sales executives take the first couple of weeks to put together the annual plans for the group and you should be trying to close out all the opportunities that slipped from …

Wouldn’t it be great if staying focused and productive came as easy as breathing? Too often the daily interruptions eat away at the time and next thing you know you have only got half your project done or somethings came up that kept you from doing it all together. So I did some sarching for ways to be more focused and productive during the day.
David Choeng wrote a good post called 18 ways to stay focused and goes over the steps he takes to keep on track. from writing down …

If you are a professional and trying to network with other people in your industry or get back in touch with past coworkers, LinkedIn is the tool you need.
CNN Money wrote about this earlier in the year talking about the growth of the site and how it is used by some of the 8 million plus users.
LinkedIn is all about business: recruiting, sales, investment. It’s not exactly a marketplace or a job site but rather a community of more than 8 million people who rely on one another to get …

There are many ways that you can organize your life. You can use todo lists that you cross items of like a shopping list, but those have been proven to be more of a time waster than a time saver for anything other than shopping lists. If you want to design your life and make sure that you put more time on the most important tasks that will lead to the future you want for yourself and family, then you need something more robust.
Electronic tools like software can help, but …