Guy Kawasaki recently discussed the results of a new study that showed that thinking about money can create social barriers. The study concluded that when people have money on their mind, "they don't want to depend on others and don't want others to depend on them." Guy applied these results to the topic of evangelism of products and services. Evangelism is where a company offers monetary rewards to clients that spread the word about them. Guy says that perhaps introducing money into the relationship will not necessarily encourage the customer to spread the word, but will rather create some type of barrier that will damage the company/customer relationship. He concludes: "My take on this ...

A customer has walked into your store or has arrived at your web site. This person is interested in your product and plans to buy, whether from you or your competitor. Your price is reasonable and the quality of the product is good. But the person ends up leaving your store/site and buying the product elsewhere. Aaargh! So where did you go wrong? It's not always possible to say, but an important part of making a sale is erasing all your customer's fears and insecurities about buying your product from you. How do you do that? Use the shoe-burning method! Burn the Shoes One summer I needed sandals, and I headed to Jaffa Street in downtown Jerusalem. ...

About a month ago I really discovered the value of blogs. Until that point, I had assumed that blogs were places where people could record their random thoughts and enjoy the ability to publicly express themselves. Blogging had become so easy, that anyone could do it, and therefore I had concluded that blog quality must be low. But then I began to discover some very intelligent, informative, and useful blogs. These blogs were obviously well thought out, and focused on specific topics. The people behind the blogs were very impressive, and I found myself checking their blogs frequently so that I could immediately read their new material. And then I discovered RSS ...