Strategic Thinking
DANIELLE HANSON is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky (Codhill Press, 2018), winner of the 2017 Codhill Poetry Award, and Ambushing Water (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017). She is a former marketing executive at AT&T and a member of the Southeast Atlanta Lady MOB small-business owners’ networking group.
BUSINESS is about making money, and poetry is not. But if we think of the connections our writing makes with readers as sales, the correlation offers some useful tools for viewing and enhancing our impact on the poetry market. Art is made not only in the solitary act of creating, but also in the act of receiving by an audience. The power of art rests in that connection. Sales works the same way: You might prep for weeks for a business meeting with a client, but the important part is what happens when you’re all seated around the table.
Businesses must focus on sales to survive. It’s not always a pleasant task, but it is made more palatable when you believe that what you’re producing will enhance someone else’s life. That the product is needed and necessary for the world. That even if people don’t know to look for the product, they will enjoy it and it will improve their experience of the world.
Below are some tools commonly used in the business world to help teams and individuals focus their time to achieve the business’s objectives in an effective
