This may seem like a no-brainer, but there's actually much, much more to Internet communication than meets the eye. Internet communication is the act of exchanging packets of information, data, through a global network. This is done by uploading data from one computer, and another computer downloads that same data. This process completes every time you video chat, send an email, reconnect with long lost friends, pay your bills, or look at cat pictures. The possibilities are endless. It is common knowledge that the Internet is irreplaceable, but there is so much more than just checking your emails or looking at cat pictures. Why does that matter? What else is there? Read on to find out. 

Halt! Before you start your newest PowerPoint presentation, read! Don't you touch that dry erase marker.

If you start out your sales pitch stating the possible clients' problem, you're doing it wrong. Now that has always been conventional wisdom, but we've evolved as an industry into a world of subtlety and nuance. Stating a prospects' problem outright will immediately put them on the defensive, make them hesitant to reveal issues about their business that truly could need improvements. You need a more tertiary, subtle approach. But what! Well, we've researched sales decks that are great examples of how modern salespeople have found success in an industry driven by relationships and customer choice. Prospects are more informed than ever, they are advocates for their needs and will not listen to armchair experts tell them what they should and shouldn't buy. So let's get on with it. Here's why your sales deck needs an update. 

We all know it: Customer Experience is and always has been one of the pillars of successful business. Happy customers become your biggest marketing assets. They provide genuine observations about your company to prospective customers, and your customers often try and up sell your company. They are better than any marketing team or sales effort. Armed with this knowledge, it would be wise to take a hard look at your customer support and ensure that they are providing the absolute highest quality services that they can to your customers. Your champion customers will spread the word of incredible customer service, and often that is the tipping point to convert a prospective customer into a closed deal. Here are 6 tasks you can do right now to improve customer support, and watch the new deals rain down. 

Startups can be weird, wacky, downright useless, and sometimes brilliant. Applications like Slack or Trello (among many others) revolutionized the way businesses could communicate. Suddenly people could "actually" be efficient. In the consumer industry, Facebook enabled people from all over the globe to interact instantly. Google happened. Often at the base of startup success is a thread : communication innovation. That's not to say that all startups set up to improve communication will succeed, but the ability for the internet to spread information instantly certainly enables a lot of very obvious solutions. Even if a new software does not focus on communication, the relay of information instantly across great distance enables incredible efficiency for businesses and consumers. And with that, here are three curious startups to watch in this weeks startup spotlight.