Your time to shine has arrived, again. So before you check out for the holiday weekend, check out why you and your organization need to come back from this long weekend with more pace and purpose, or this window will close on you as it has before.

If you believe in your content brand and its place in your user's lives, these steps will help convert your convictions into more ad dollars. If you don't carry that belief with you in the door, nothing can help you.

Most people have the ability to achieve greatness in some area, but their own mental limitations keep them from ever actually getting there. There are two challenges to achieving greatness: sheer will and quantification.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how salespeople fear being replaced by machines. I said they should not worry. I made an analogy with the market for financial investments, where highly compensated salespeople sell "commoditized" financial instruments like stocks and bonds whose price is set on exchanges. This analogy breaks down for many media salespeople because they are armed with so little information of value to their prospects. Too many of these salespeople really have nothing to bring to the client other than price. Media companies need to equip and train their sales staff to sell value, not …

I'm a media buyer at a very large agency and I was recently given two high-profile clients with healthy media budgets. So as you'd expect, I get asked to go out very often by my reps; lunches, drinks, dinners, shows, ball games, etc. I have experienced a bit of that before, but never at this level. I am starting to feel weird about it. I know the people taking me out expect my business in return. Do I have to give it to them -- or should I decline their extravagant offers?