PowerBlog Review: Revenue Roundtable

Editor's note: This is the eightieth in our regular weekly series of PowerBlog Reviews of business weblogs. This week's review is being guest-blogged by Lynne Meyer. Lynne Meyer, APR, is president of A Way with Words.

By Lynne Meyer

The Revenue Roundtable isn't a single entity. It's a team.

Jim Logan, Michael McLaughlin, Susan Getgood, Kevin Stirtz, Jill Konrath and Brian Carroll are based all over the United States -- Massachusetts, California, Chicago and Minnesota.

These six savvy business experts work in international management consulting, marketing, sales, product development, publishing and communications. They've each received awards and recognition in business and in blogging. Now, in addition to their own individual blogs, they've teamed up to establish a group effort -- The Revenue Roundtable blog.

According to Jim Logan, their goal is to provide information about sales, marketing and business development to help small-business owners grow profitably. "Stick with us," Jim says, "if you want specific advice on marketing strategy, lead generation, managing a complex sale and expanding your business with your existing customers. And that's just the start."

That's a lot to promise, but Revenue Roundtable has a lot to offer. Even though there are six of them contributing, this blog isn't all over the map. Instead they organize their postings around topics. Together, they write on a topic to provide in-depth information and views on that particular issue. For easy reader navigation, they also have all their entries organized by categories, and they indicate at the end of each posting the category in which that entry will be filed.

I especially like their sales tips of the day. Their June 13 sales tip posting, "Don't bring all your goodies to the table," is a great example of the kind of practical sales and business oriented advice the site offers:

"To be successful getting into big companies, you need to think small. Take a look at all the products or services you offer and determine which one(s):


• Solve the company's most urgent problems,


• Are the most differentiated from your competition,


• Are in greatest demand, and


• Create the best results the quickest.


Your job is to figure out which subset of your own offering will give you the highest likelihood of getting your foot in the door of that company."

Living up to its name as the "Revenue Roundtable" the largest number of posts are about sales and generating sales leads. That's what makes this blog so useful. For most small businesses, especially startups, generating sufficient sales is always one of the toughest challenges.

In addition to good solid advice to help companies build their businesses, the Revenue Roundtable offers a list of recommended business books. They even offer sales lessons from business books and movies, such as a sales lesson distilled from the film "Pulp Fiction."

The team blog or group blog approach adopted by the Revenue Roundtable is one of the latest trends in blogging. Sometimes these blogs are referred to as network blogs. They offer the advantages of multiple voices speaking on related topics. Yet they also offer variety that comes from each person approaching the subject matter from different perspectives and with different expertise.

Group blogs distribute the workload and keep from bogging you down as a solo blogger. Writing a blog involves a commitment of time and not everyone is prepared to do it daily or several times a week. A group blog takes some of the time pressure off.

If you want to see how group blogging is done well, visit the Revenue Roundtable.