I am really enjoying the articles over at Creative Manager Pro. One article that sticks out to me right now is When to Walk Away from a New Business Prospect by Connie Burtcheard from CSB Consulting. This article is very relevant to me at the moment because it reinforces much of what Kerry recently talked about in his post Difficult Clients II.

A great follow-up from my previous post on Neil Tortella’s article, Shaun Crowley has shared his email and telephone contact strategy for his new business efforts. Shaun does a great job of defining the different types of leads and how you should approach each type.

Neil Tortella provides a good article on his blog about the overall process you should follow when building and managing your own contact list to keep track of your leads and clients. I especially like how he says to focus on the method/tool you will use to capture the information, and only move on after you have chosen one. I have been guilty myself for making large efforts at expanding my contact list, only to end up frustrated because I had no specific method of collection in place.

Jeffrey Gitomer has made quite a name for himself as a sales guru with his numerous little books and the indisputable “Bible“, but many of his readers don’t realize that much of his teachings are available to you for free. Thats right F-R-E-E, free! Biz Journals has a complete archive of his weekly column, Sales Moves, dating all the way back to 1996. Holy crap thats nice!

I’ve been reading a lot lately. One particular book that has again caught my attention is Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer.

AIGA Nebraska:AIGA Nebraska is proud to present the 2005/06 Business Resource Guide [9.3MB PDF]. This guide, also titled “Good Design is Good Business,” is an excellent resource for showing the value of our profession to the business community.

My commute each day is roughly 3.5 hours long, round trip. That is 3.5 hours that I use to stay in touch with contacts, research potential and current clients, and use to keep learning even more about how I can help studios succeed in business. How long do you get to dedicate to your new business efforts?

I’ve been thinking about KISS almost everyday lately and this recent post by Jason Guthrie has got me inspired to share why I feel it is such a big necessity in business development and client relations.

I really like what Kevin is saying over at graphicPUSH about Commission-Based Payment for Web Design. It is an interesting concept and one that I could see very beneficial to many freelancers and small business owners.

A new tip is up over at Be A Design Group for Be Aware 17. In this one I gave some advice on the best ingredients for a good proposal.