"Publishing is, or should be, a quiet operation, and it was Fleischmann's talent to make it almost inaudible. From the first, he was convinced that the separation of the editorial and the business sides of the magazine had to be complete: no disingenuous management requests for editorial mention of an important advertiser's product, no publisher's protests against an article that might offend a prominent client—no pressures, overt or hidden."

I just received a suggestion for a session at SIPA Annual 2018 called Content Is Now Everyone's Business. How true.

Brian Cuthbert of Diversified Communications, who recently delivered a webinar for us on Aligning Editorial Strategy with Sales and Marketing, has his editors reach out to five cancelled members each month to ask "What can we do better?" and see if they will come back. "We've picked up 3% of cancelled members by doing this," he said.

"Organizations have this notion that selling is about 'I get something from you and therefore I win,' but it's ultimately about service," Daniel Pink wrote in his book, To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others." You have to understand that what you're doing when selling is in some ways noble." 

One of the biggest challenges for Brian Cuthbert, group vice president, Diversified Communications, is that less than 5% of his audience—finance professionals—are actual decision-makers.

It has been close to a month, but ideas from the SIPA Annual 2017 Conference still ring in my mind (save the date for SIPA Annual 2018 - June 5-7 in Washington, DC). One concept that particularly resonated was when Brian Cuthbert, group vice president for Diversified Communications, said that he insists his editors speak at industry events.