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In the book Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra, in Chapter 13, Jon writes about radio and TV advertising. Basically, you need to dominate a show or a channel to gain market share. Spoelstra doesn't talk about market share. He thinks it's about your brand being considered socially acceptable. PR firms want you to do Frequency and Reach. In other words, branding - get your name in front as many people as possible. Spoelstra's strategy is that you should dominate the show that targets your demographic. When you dominate a show, you create the impression that you are socially acceptable and ingrain yourself on the audience (your demographic).

I believe he is right. When you look at TMC portals, one company owns each category. Seth Godin in The Dip talks about being Best in the World. But it's up to you to define that world. That's what the Chris Anderson's Long Tail and Niche Marketing is all about. The way to be Best of Breed is to dominate a Niche that you create. That is what Whole Foods and Starbucks did -- established a Blue Ocean Strategy; that is, these companies stake out a new, uncontested category to dominate.

Most companies do not need millions to be successful. They need thousands. And they can narrow their focus to the best 1000 prospects to get that number. But like Vonage they want to hit everyone. It's expensive and doesn't pay off. Because it's expensive. Do you want to be Toyota or Lexus or Porsche? I want to be Porsche. 

What is your demographic? Don't know? Okay. What target market are you attracting and how can you dominate it in some way? If you are a Telecom Company and you are dominating your space, maybe you should talk to TMC or me about what slice of the market you want to own and we can devise a plan where you work to own that niche. That's the way to go. Be a sharpshooter not a scatter shot.

When I look at the fall of Nortel (and Alcatel-Lucent) as well as banking giants, Circuit City, GM, and more, I have to ask, "What happened?"  In his new book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins writes about how once great companies have declined. Collins goes over the summary in Business Week where he identifies five stages of decline. Nortel came to mind as I was reading it but so did Lucent.

The whole situation is best exemplified by the music industry and newspapers. They didn't want to change - couldn't see the writing on the wall. Each was stuck in a revenue model that was supposed to work forever - and never bothered to examine a Plan B. Are you certain that you are not doing that?

In his book, Marketing Outrageously, Jon Spoelstra asks, "What business are you in?" Specifically, he talks about both railroads and Smith Corona. Railroads didn't realize they were in the people transport business, so missed out on becoming the airlines. Smith Corona thought they were in the typewriter business, when actually they were in the word publishing business. They missed the PC age.  NCR and the cash register business was another one that came to mind.

Do you think you are in the VOIP, UC, or SAAS business? Think again. You are in the Reliable Application Delivery game or the Reliable Communications Platform moreso. And you better not forget it or fail.

Xerox is the example that Collins cites in the Business Week article of a company that was in a death spiral, but the CEO pulled them out. Kodak is another.  Don't you see comparisons to Qwest, Level3, Global Crossing and XO in these stories? I do. It's not about pipe size or bytes or telecom. It's about the ability for a business to reliably get information, database access, and connect and interact with partners, employees, customers and prospects. It's like a car: no one cares how it works, just that it does when the ignition is turned on.

It seems that as 2008 comes to a spiraling end, everyone is giving business advice. If you run a small business, here's some of it:

• No Recession from Us has a bunch of links.
• Duct Tape Marketing has some thoughts from thought leaders.
• Caruso on Embracing the Internet
• Doug Sundheim with Showing Up advice
• Predictions for 2009
• Advice from SCORE
• Tips for Web companies from ReadWriteWeb (directed at companies, but solid advice for all)

Other Best Of lists for Business books in 2008:

• Fast Company
• John Moore at Brand Autopsy
• 800-CEO-READ
• Reuters list

I vote for you reading Seth's best blog posts.  And my own thoughts for businesses in 2009 is: Differentiate and Sell. Not be everything to everyone. Be Unique and actually sell services. Especially in 2009, although I have elected not to participate in the recession at all.

Every year, sales gets harder and harder. Finding qualified salespeople (the closers and hunters) is challenging. Then try to find someone who can lead or manage the salespeople. Sales Leadership is an elusive thing. One key reason is that sales training is missing.

We don't teach sales in school. Many companies have cut training budgets. However, sales is a process. If you want success, you develop and follow a system. From lead generation to qualifying the prospect to proposal to contract, there are a series of questions, actions, and follow up involved. Keith Rosen covers this in his book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Closing the Sale.

In his latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions, Keith Rosen gives every business execute the playbook to coach the sales team to be champions. Great athletes have coaches. And sales professionals know it all anyway. (Just ask them!) So it is more about Coaching than it is about micro-managing, if the desired outcome is a productive sales force.

Buy it for less than twenty dollars today or tomorrow and receive a bunch of bonus material from sales champions like Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins. Let me know what you think.