For some of us less comfortable with the cold call selling process, here are some tips on how to approach those contacts that you know about what you do, and how your products and services might improve their situation.  http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237437

Somewhere deep inside, I hope we’re all techies at heart.  I know we are around this office.  Sometimes it is difficult to change society’s vocabulary when a term has already been ingrained.  Such is the case with poor Microsoft.  They have a neat technical device called the Microsoft Surface, which appears to be a stout competitor to the much more familiar iPad.  Here’s a story about how that bit them, just a little, and how much they paid for that nibble 🙂  http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-nfl-surface-ipads-2014-9

We designed the Vote4Change stickers to help you collect your recycles and return them to ink4mail for account credit, and wanted to get a little bit of feedback as to how you think they look?  Place them on a sturdy box and put them in a prominent place, so your empty ink cartridges will find the box, rather than a trash can.  We’ll recycle any HP 45 size cartridge, like HP Versatile (C8842A), or HP Fast Dry (C6195A), along with the Collins Inks that we carry Max 2, Max 3, Endurance, Reliable, etc.  Keep your eye out for emails and blog postings over the next couple of months for additional incentives!

Although this truly has very little to do with business topics, it is a creative solution to a problem, and also rather funny to watch, in my opinion.  To solve the problem of getting fish around hydroelectric dams as they spawn, someone came up with a Salmon Cannon, to get them past the problem.  https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/weekend-diversion-saving-salmon-with-a-cannon-19e4d0ff2db5

This is a little farther away from standard “business” topic, or at least looking at it from a longer term perspective.  Having a couple of kids in hockey myself, I can attest to the fact that birth date is a very large factor in terms of being selected for better teams, and subsequently getting better coaching early on in development.  Big factor number two is when puberty rolls in 🙂

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/09/the-shameful-fraud-of-sorting-for-youth-meritocracy.html

I guess I wasn’t in the right mood.  How often do we allow ourselves to use the reason / excuse “I don’t feel like it” to avoid getting done what needs to be done 🙂  Here’s an article with a few thoughts on how you can beat the procrastination bug.  http://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/how-to-beat-procrastination-stop-waiting-for-the-right-mood.html

Direct mail has kind of always been about content marketing, hasn’t it?  It was content marketing when content marketing wasn’t cool (To borrow from any number of country songs 🙂 )  Here’s some info on how the brain processes visual vs. textual information and how that can impact how we communicate with our customers.  http://www.inc.com/larry-kim/master-both-the-science-and-art-of-content-marketing-infographic.html

Throughout our history, the HP Versatile C8842A has always been our best seller, but in recent months, a number of inks from Collins are closing the gap, including the Max 3, the Max 2, and the CM-557H.  We appreciate the great relationship that we’ve developed with Collins, in order to provide you with the best level of support, and hopefully the best delivery times.  We’re continuing to expand the line of Collins products that we will represent and stock, so look for additional changes in the months ahead.  If there is a Collins ink that you need, but you don’t see it on our site, please do not hesitate to call and ask us for a quote!!  We’ll work to stock it, if it makes sense for both of us.