There’s only one problem salespeople face when times are good and that’s getting sloppy. It’s easy to be deluded by success, to believe that our success is due to our incredible ability to convince customers to do business with us. If the truth were told, customers were flush with cash and just wanted to place the order.

It must be easy to accumulate bad habits in business, as there are so many of them. Unfortunately, they can have a negative impact on us personally, as well as on our companies. Here are 22 business do’s and don’ts that influence how we are perceived.

The bottom line is that there’s no way today to hold the customer captive. If you try, you’re done. Facing such circumstances, what do marketers do to meet these challenges? Here are five principles to follow.

Almost instantly, the iPhone became the standard by which consumers judged all other cell phones, even though they had not held one in their hand. Even as the iPhone introduction continues, we may be able to uncover some interesting marketing and sales messages that can be used in all businesses.

If more salespeople were as good at making sales as they are in losing them, they could write their own ticket just about anywhere. Here’s a checklist of 18 behaviors that contribute to losing sales instead of closing them.

Like B.F. Skinner’s famed Harvard-trained pigeons, often we just keep on pecking away with the same old resolutions. Perhaps we should come at the problem another way - stopping old behavior may be better than starting new behavior.

Some businesspeople talk about customers wanting to talk with a live person, while others say that customers expect personal service. Is this really what customers want? Or are they looking to have their needs met in ways that satisfy them?