Igniting the Revolution...

Damn, I love it when our partners feel good about the Microsoft "touch." Check this out re: Gail Steele, a Mid-Atlantic Partner Account Manager to her boss from Digicon . Good morning John, I wanted to take a few minutes out of my day to tell you about...

We talk a lot about getting people to commit to an event, but not as much about how they feel when they are there. Call out to the team at NMR for their event yesterday. They've got a nice, comfortable seating area (with couches) that makes for a great...

On my Windows XP media center machine, if I wanted to burn a recorded show to a DVD, I couldn't do it w/Windows. I bought a program called DVD Santa, which got the job done. It wasn't the best, but it worked. Last night, I had to burn some shows of the...

Interesting post from Chris Anderson on the mindset of the CIO today.

Our man, Seth, does it again. When you're prepping for your next event, think about it. Why name tags matter...

I was at the NMR event this AM and Lauren Brice of the AFA saw Excel 2007's sorting/conditional formatting improvements and remarked: "You don't know how many hours of customer service support you have just saved us." That's what I love to hear!!

Marketing is both science and art, no question. The art part is how you make people feel, but there's a science part. One of them is when we make suggestions about locations for your event. There's a TON of data-mining and analysis that goes into this...

Based on partner feedback… We'll be here every Wednesday for calling. If you want to come into the DC office to make calls, you can now do so. Bring your own list, use the caller ID, and stay focused. We'll still have our standard blitz on the...

With call out to Seth Godin for the concept , check out this resume This is how you do it! Props to Michael Eisenberg's blog .

Another tool to use before you call a company. Get a feel for how their website fares. Source: dnScoop - Domain Name History Tool, Traffic Verification and Forums

Or perhaps Blog ROI might be better. Had an intro call with Chris Chodnicki of Bi4ce and he made my day by telling me that he'd read this blog and it wasn't the "usual PR junk you would expect from Microsoft." To paraphrase, he found it "entertaining...

We celebrated my brother's engagement on Sunday night by going around the table and having everyone offer his/her opinion about what makes a great wedding. My brother nailed it on the head when he said, " plan it as if you were a guest ." Paula Gulak...

I have NO idea who the author is or why he's writing to me. My name is XXXXXXX and I'm with XXX. We were founded in 1994 land, and maintain status as a small woman-owned business with a current GSA schedule and active secret DoD clearance. Our employees...

Karen just wrote in with a great idea for our call in 2 weeks: Another idea I have is to set aside time to talk about "when bad things happen to good events." There are a lot of lessons to be learned about dealing with problems because event planning...

Went out to a jam-packed event by MTI today in Reston. Over 75 customers there. These guys really know how to turn registrants into attendees. You know what they do? Programmatically reach out to registrants in the weeks leading up to the event Ask "involving...

Went into the T-mobile store to buy a new bluetooth headset. I said, "Hey, do you have a discount for existing customers?" (it would have been nice if they asked me first, but hey, I'm aggressive.) The rep, Leo, says, "what's your cell number?" Then,...

If you've got a stain on a shirt at the dry cleaner, they take one of these sticke rs and put it on the location of the stain. Makes sense, right? My idea...give the stickers to their customers. That way, when I spill something, I put the sticker on myself...

A GREAT piece....something to think about... Link to Seven steps to remarkable customer service - Joel on Software

Got to hand it to Mike and John at ATSG . They really took full advantage of the launch at BWI Marriott yesterday. They rented out a room ( right in the middle of the event ) and invited a large number of their customers and prospects to join them for...

One of the best parts of this job is working with partners to develop their marketing expertise. I'm particularly excited by the progress that Maria from MetroStar has made in the past few months. I think Maria would agree that when she started, her marketing...

Here's the official press release... Link to News & Events - Robert H. Smith School of Business - University of Maryland, College Park

Saw Karen Riordan of Grace-Hunt today at the Launch event at BWI Marriott. She was raving about the value of the Get Engaged program. If nothing else, it's valuable to learn how Microsoft works. You can't get that unless you are 'engaged.' [her word,...

When we went to hear Seth Godin, he talked about cultivating (as farmers do) those who are interested in your product/service. Ask people who know me and they will tell you that I have a very programmatic approach to managing the relationships I have...

Ellie at Enabling Technologies conducted a Unified Messaging event on Jan. 25th. She writes: I just wanted to follow up and let you know that the Baltimore event for Enabling has already resulted in a pilot for Miles Stockbridge, a prominent Baltimore...

Every Friday, I prepare the agenda for my 1:1 meeting with Reed Overfelt, our GM. I send him a snapshot of our scorecard for each month (here's February) Then, I try to provide some commentary around it...what's going on. For example: Commentary We’re...