Voting No, Plus Sales versus Marketing

I voted today, something I feel all employers and employees should do as a civic responsibility. One of the best companies I worked for gave employees two hours off on election day for voting purposes.

The above photo shows the Huntington Community Center during the mid-morning loll. It felt weird being there. The last time I was there was four months ago, collecting cleaning supplies donated by the county to the Huntington flood victims.

In the same vein, I voted against both referendums for Fairfax County to incur debt for public services. It's insulting to me that the County is so quick to incur debt to build up parks for tens of millions of dollars, yet they won't build a flood wall to protect this neighborhood.

It's economic discrimination, and as a late joining member of the community -- part of that real estate boom gentrification process -- I am pretty horrified by the callous treatment of this neighborhood by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. Mt. Vernon Supervisor Hyland does a great job, but the rest of the community would rather ignore the presence of the 160 flooded homes than deal with a problem caused by over-development.

OK, you got my $0.02.

Great meeting today for a huge pitch next week. A lot of it involved better integrating the sales and marketing functions. It’s just astounding to me that PR and marketing professionals avoid the inevitable tie to sales. The reality of the two disciplines is that they are intertwined, by nature completely dependent on each other for success.

It’s amazing to me that the two don’t strive to understand each other more often, instead choosing war first. Harvard Business Review had a great article dedicated to the topic this past July discussing how to integrate sales and marketing more closely.

Anyway, this is a great pitch opportunity. I am going all out for this one.