Marketing and Sales

"Sales meeting.” No two words in the English language cause a reps’ eyes to roll more than these. Sales meetings are important, though. They can keep a team a team. They can be informative and informational. Since all sales challenges are shared, there’s a good chance someone in the room has an idea or a solution that is exactly on point. While sales meetings are necessary, boring sales meetings are not...

The financial market is certainly appealing for promo distributors. The obvious reason is, well, the money, and not just the kind in the bank vaults. There are seemingly countless numbers of banks (with numerous branches all over the country), lending institutions, credit unions, you name it—and if you approach them the right way, it could…

For its advertising campaign tagline, Mastercard has dabbled in brand bravado by dubbing its services “Priceless.” That adjective, though, will soon lose its applicability with respect to the New York-headquartered financial services corporation’s logo, as the credit card behemoth will be dropping its name from the artistic identifier. Only two-and-a-half years after it modified the…

It’s a new year with new opportunities to make 2019 your most successful year yet, and the first step is to get rid of the "but" in your vocabulary and stop making excuses. Many times I find people give excuses without even knowing it by making statements such as, “Last year my goal was to…

Soon, pretty much the entire promo industry will converge on Las Vegas for PPAI Expo. To get you ready for the trip, Kellyann Messick, road warrior for Hit Promotional Products, dropped by the studio, live and in-person, to give her best advice on Expo prep, business travel, industry events, what to do in Vegas and…

Next Level Apparel, Gardena, Calif., announced that it is expanding into Germany and the EU through an exclusive partnership with L-SHOP-TEAM, a Dortmund, Germany-based company with locations across Europe. "We’re delighted to be launching our styles into Germany/EU, and even more so to be launching with L-SHOP-TEAM," said Mark Seymour, CSO at Next Level Apparel.…

The end of the year is a time for retrospectives. We look back on the year and think about our accomplishments, the highlights, maybe some things that didn't quite work out but we can work on in 2019. In the television world, it's when you usually get stuck with an episode that revisits clips from…

What was everyone reading in 2018? These stories, apparently! By page views, these were our most-read promo industry (or promo industry-related) stories of the year. If you missed them, don't worry. You have until the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve to get caught up. After that, they all turn back into a pumpkin, or something. Thanks for reading, everyone...

It's hard to believe, but 2018 is pretty much over. And to think, we just stopped writing "2017" for every date! To give it a proper send-off, we're running a series of retrospectives recapping the year that was. Today's subject: promo social media. These were our top stories of the year involving Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and anything else social...

It’s not every day that distributors get the chance to work with a celebrity. When they do, they want to go all out, right? Jovan Van Drielle, chief ideas artist for Geminus Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz., remembers one particular promotion that went over very well with a very famous director...