George Hague

When I was in school, there was a guy on our basketball team who could dunk like it was nobody's business. Left hand, right hand, two hands behind his head, you name it. He also had the unfortunate habit of dribbling the ball off his foot and ricocheting it across the court. He sat the bench.

Smart CEOs know two essential B-to-B metrics to successfully grow their businesses: contribution per order (CPO) for new customers and life-time value (LTV) of existing customers. They may sound difficult to figure out, but the process is actually easy.

Sometimes an odd suggestion can really turn a company around. Here are three nontraditional recommendations that have significantly improved sales for B-to-B direct marketers:

Tribute bands pretend to be something else. Their motivation may be out of admiration, but essentially these musicians copy successful bands right down to dress, hair style and accent. Tribute bands appeal to a subset of fans of the bands being imitated. They limit their potential by pretending to be musicians perceived to be more talented than themselves. Is your company a tribute band? Are you constantly pretending to be your competitor? Here are some ways to tell:

Many consumer catalogers have unknown gold nuggets in their database. These nuggets are called businesses. If you treat these high-value customers as if they're retail customers, you're missing a big opportunity. If your product line has this cross-over appeal, you could potentially double your sales through expansion into the B-to-B universe.

Concerned about privacy? Now you can see what data has been collected on you. I was in for a shock. In an admirable move toward transparency, Acxiom, one of the largest data collection companies in the world, will show you a summary of your personal data. You can see its view into your world at AbouttheData.com. The shock for me? Acxiom got me just plain wrong.

Our cable bill doubled. Apparently we had an introductory rate — which lasted more than five years. We had nearly 500 channels, and nothing ever seemed to be on, so we cut cable. Cold turkey. Even returned the cable company's DVR full of unwatched episodes of nothing in particular.

It's official: J.C. Penney scrapped its every-day-low-price strategy for the rollercoaster world of markups and markdowns. Merchants, marketers and graphic artists waited with bated breath, hoping J.C. Penney could make this strategy work. Imagine the time it would save! Price changes and errors would be a thing of the past.

True confession: I love it when mail quantities in the United States are down. Although this trend is overall bad for our industry, in the here and now it's good news. The reason? There will be less competition in the mailbox for my clients. As a result, their response will soar. Catalogs and direct mail continue to drive sales for niche and specialty B-to-B companies, but a question persists: Through web optimization, can't you get all of these sales by spending a lot less money?

The Roman Catholic Church needs a serious brand makeover. It's gotten so bad that the previous CEO, aka Pope Benedict, gave his three weeks notice. Since he couldn't cite wanting to spend more time with his family, he intends to devote his life to prayer. Prayer? This brand really needs help. In selecting its new boss, the church's board of directors, aka the College of Cardinals, had to pull a rabbit out of their mitre. And did they.