What puts the “Jack” in the beanstalk

For years and years, the story of Jack in the beanstalk seems nothing more to the average man than a child’s innocent fairy tale. And then one day, its real meaning stares him in the face like a roaring lion. It’s not just any man or woman who discovers this. It’s the person who has done something as audacious as…

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Was this advertising’s darkest hour?

The curling smoke of Lucky Strikes was just a part of growing up in our home. The acrid wafts drifted up, the variety of ashtrays lay here and there, and fancy aluminum lighters had to be filled with a special can of lighter fluid. Once as a boy, when I had a bad earache, my dad…

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How grandma got rid of grandpa

There’s a story in our family that gets handed down from one generation to the next. “Why did grandma marry grandpa?” “To get rid of him.” What? Well, it seems that during their time of dating, grandpa kept bugging grandma to marry him. Finally, she gave in, just to keep him quiet – or, in…

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Getting new customers is not just a slam-bang deal

Turning a prospect into a customer is more than a one-step process. We suggest that you think of your marketing as involving three steps: capture, qualify, and cultivate. You must first capture your customer. This can be, for example, through advertising, SEO, or a Facebook relationship. Secondly, you want to qualify your prospect. Not every…

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The “how” and “why” questions that make Facebook work for you

When I sold cable service door to door some years back, the sales people were trained to ask the “how” or “why” questions. We were to stay away from the dead-end inquiries such as, “Do you like your current cable service?” The reason of course, was that if the reply can be given in one word, the conversation…

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