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It is easy for a sales force to fall into a comfort zone. Data-driven decision making techniques can help insure that Reps are reaching beyond their current contacts.

In many companies there is a great deal of data about the market. The challenge is to drive this into your field organization so that the Reps and their Managers are probing for untapped market potential on a regular basis.

There are some simple and quick ways to start using data in selling to schools and school districts. This post outlines some ideas for how to encourage your sales force to adopt a more data driven approach.

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A new alternate reality game (ARG) launched recently to explore what an oil shock would look like. World With Oil is the game and it is incorporating all of the social media found on the web in this massively multiplayer experience.

The coolest part – it is only 4 days old and they already have resources for the classroom. Talk about the power of social media for learning.

Sign up and join in to learn what it is all about.

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The worlds of textbook publishers and education technology companies are colliding. The market is driving this convergence – schools have had technology around long enough that they have figured out how it can integrate in with existing practices. Yet the list of successful educational products that blend print and technology is few and far between.

I moved into the publishing world 4 years ago from ed tech. From my perspective on both sides of this fence the problem has more to do with the vendors clashing paradigms than with customer demand.

The paradigms are radically different along several key vectors and reconciling these will be the central challenge as Riverdeep and Houghton merge and as Pearson absorbs Harcourt (announced today).

Follow me to the flip for a more detailed look at this problem.

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Has your company ever honed a promotional activity only to see it lose its potency right as you perfect it? The frustrating fact is that promotional activities have a shelf life.

This happens because the more effective you get at targeting a market the faster you tap the folks who respond to a given approach. A company I worked at had honed direct mail to a fine art over 3 years – our response rates consistently topped 2%. All of a sudden our response rates were down to 1%. We knew our stuff was good – it had worked in the past. But over those 3 years we had reached most of the folks who responded to mail.

What can you do when this happens? Follow me to the flip for 3 suggestions.

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Most companies switch their marketing messaging too frequently and undermine the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns as a result. The power of repetition is one of the foundations of world-class marketing.

So if it is a bad idea – why do so many companies do it? Find three reasons on the flip – see if any of them fit your company.

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