Next year will be the year of selling big ideas. Big--as in selling-a-five-percent-stake-in-your-own-company kind of big. That's what Google acquired from AOL, right? I have no idea how this deal was proposed, but I do know it started like any other deal--with a sales call.

It's December, which means that if you're not at your desk holiday shopping online, you're probably working on some component of the 2006 budget. And if you're in the interactive media industry, a growing segment of that budget is very likely the Conference and Events line item.

How do you make a million-dollar product? It is not easy, but when done well, such products reflect the creative talents of the salespeople on the account.

Seth Godin is one of the best known pundits in the blogosphere. In a recent entry in his blog, he writes, "This blog has one of the fastest-growing RSS feed lists I know of, but it's still a scary-low percentage of my readership."