Sales is the life blood of every company. Developing the product can pale in comparison with getting out there and trying to sell it. Yet selling is a footnote in the curriculum of many MBA programs. As Jim Healy points out, if you underestimate the critical importance of selling, you can lose opportunities and risk getting sidelined by the competition. You need a fundamental understanding of the four dynamic and interactive aspects of selling: analyzing...

Three businesses and three business plans. Why did they need them? What did they put in them? Were they worth it? 1. Aims and objectives: Every business plan should have a company's aims and objectives. The Croft Tea Room has the ambitious aim of helping to regenerate the run-down area of St Mary Cray. And linked to a firm's aims will be a description of its product or service. In the case of the Spoonfed company this is a website where you find...

These days, sex doesn't just sell, it saturates our culture. In the age of runaway social media and "sexting," raunchy rap songs on pop radio and hardcore pornography at the click of a mouse—what's it like to be a woman? A girl? A teenage boy? Their parents? In this feature documentary, the directors follow a trio of characters to reveal the toll all this titillation is taking on America and forces viewers to get comfortable having the uncomfortable...

Timo, an esteemed concert pianist, gets the surprise of his life one day after arriving home after a performance only to find a homeless drunkard asleep outside his front door. The man, Leo (played by Finnish musician, actor and artist Vesa-Matti Loiri), makes the outrageous claim to be Timo’s long-lost father who left the country when Timo was three and hadn’t been in touch since. Leo, as mysterious and manipulative as he is slovenly, has returned...

"In the spirit of Adam Braun's The Promise of a Pencil and Blake Mycoskie's Start Something That Matters, Fully Alive tells the story of an astoundingly successful young entrepreneur's immersion in Amazonian indigenous spirituality and how he integrated the lessons he learned to build a successful, socially responsible company, live a purposeful life, and make a difference in the world. In Fully Alive, Tyler Gage shares his spiritual adventures and...

An eccentric schoolteacher takes her class on wonderous educational field trips with the help of a magical schoolbus. Getting energized (topic: energy): The class is ready to plug in their "double trouble wheel of wonder" at the carnval when they discover all the outlets are taken. Gets charged (topic: electricity): The class is selling light bulbs. When they stop at Ms. Frizzle's house to sell her one, they find that her doorbell doesn't work. A...