It's called a continuity sale, and variations of it abound all over the place. If you've ever seen or used a business punchcard -- you know, those "buy five pizzas, get one free" deals -- you've seen continuity sales at work.

Here's the thing: they work in virtually any service business to increase the number of sales you'll make.

In 1985, with the publication of Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior, University of Rochester psychologists Richard Ryan and Edward Deci launched a new theory for understanding what drives humans. Their model maintained that people are motivated by innate psychological needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness to others – not, as the reigning theories of the day espoused, by inherited instincts or learned responses.

For those contemplating pursuing a search fund, or investing in one, the CES has created a practical guide to answer the most frequently asked questions. The Primer aims to provide an unbiased view of the benefits and challenges, explains the model from the entrepreneurs' and investors' perspective, and gives many operational and execution tips from previous search fund entrepreneurs.

Success is no longer defined as simply reaching income goals and achieving a leadership position at any cost. We also want to be happy, to feel that our life has meaning and that the work we are doing taps into our greatest talents. It’s easy enough to evaluate a job based on salary, title and perks, but judging other elements that often lead to true satisfaction can be tricky. A Career Compass can help you find those career intangibles. It points you toward your “sweet spot,” the point where three critical variables intersect: your strengths, your interests and the environment where you will flourish.

Erikson's model of psychosocial development is a very significant, highly regarded and meaningful concept.

Life is a serious of lessons and challenges which help us to grow. Erikson's wonderful theory helps to tell us why.

Here's a broad introduction to the main features of Erikson's model.

Stock options have a positive effect on firm performance when they are granted to executives, but giving options to lower-ranking employees seems to have no effect on the bottom line according to a new study.

Can a CEO—even one as talented and visionary as Steve Jobs—really make or break a corporation? Many business scholars have grown skeptical of the idea of chief executive as superhero. Cutting-edge research reveals that while some CEOs clearly do make a big difference, many are merely the most visible cogs in complex machines.

Left unchecked, subconscious biases will undermine strategic decision making. Here’s how to counter them and improve corporate performance.

Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has met very few people who have a plan for their lives. Most are passive spectators, watching their lives unfold a day at a time. They may plan their careers, the building of a new home, or even a vacation. But it never occurs to them to plan their life. As a result, many end up discouraged and disillusioned, wondering where they went wrong.

But, he says, it doesn’t have to be this way. You can live your life on purpose. It begins by creating a “Life Plan.” This won’t insulate you from life’s many adversities and unexpected twists and turns, but it will help you become an active participant in your life, intentionally shaping your own future.

In a blog post, Hyatt shares with you how to create such a plan for your life. It consists of three sections:
* Outcomes
* Priorities
* Action Plans

Ideacide is a great way to kill creativity. There are many ways to perform it.

Businesses with the best product-development track records stand apart from their less-successful peers in three crucial ways.

Listening to real time conversations for opportunities, leads, and reputation management is now a standard marketing item on the to-do list.

While there are services that provide this kind of tracking for a fee, there are a number of tools that any do-it-yourselfer can employ to capture much of what’s being said about their brands, people, products, and industries in real time.

Data from mixed-mode questions are hard, if not impossible, to interpret accurately.

The first part of this article will give an example of a mixed-mode question and an analysis of how to interpret the results that such as question would produce. As you will see, mixed-mode questions, or scales, should be avoided.

The second part of this article will explore the problem of mixed-mode scales further and use the example from the first part to point out issues related to interpreting the data. We then find a solution to the original, flawed approach.

Many site small business owners' eyes glaze over when people start talking about analytics, click through rates, and abandonment funnels. Really, there's a lot of jargon that goes with measuring a site with analytics.

Small business owners should be paying attention to their site analytics because the data provides useful insights into their site traffic, which ultimately leads to more sales. If you're not paying attention to your site analytics, your business is leaving money on the table.

Whether you have just been promoted to manager or are joining a new department, you need to be able to adapt smoothly to your new position. We have developed a list of proven tips and strategies to make it through the transition successfully.

If inflation rises again, companies will have to do more than just match it to keep up—they’ll have to beat it.

Multimedia bonus: An interactive exhibit allows you to see over time how much a company's earnings must increase in order to keep cash flow stable.

It's a question most of us have asked ourselves: What makes successful people so, well, successful? It's tempting to think that those at the top of their fields know something the rest of us mere mortals don't. But that "special something" you've been searching for isn't an uncanny ability to predict the market's future, a membership in MENSA, or a secret business formula. Quite simply, the trait that sets top achievers apart from the competition is their ability to connect.

If you're ready to start truly connecting, read on for some straightforward, easy-to-apply tips that will garner immediate results.

You make decisions every day based on false assumptions about other people, immediate pay-offs, your memory versus imagination, and familiarity versus fondness, just to name a few. Want to learn more about your mind's crazy decision engine? This illustrated guide can help. [Lifehacker Annotation]

Dispersed teams can actually outperform groups that are co-located. To succeed, however, virtual collaboration must be managed in specific ways.

Bankruptcy helps the undeserving—and that’s the way it should be.

Every small business leader faces the challenge of building and managing a team. Finding the right folks is half the battle. After you find them, it is your responsibility to manage the team. Great management happens on both a "micro" level and a "macro" level.

More and more, brands are recognizing that a strategic approach to content is becoming important. Content is moving from being among the final considerations of a Web-development project to being front and center in a digital-marketing strategy.

But content is merely a means to an end: Content drives conversations, conversations are how you engage with people, and engaging with people is the only way brands will be able to survive in the social-media-disrupted world we now live in.

Formulating a content strategy can be a difficult process, partly because of the many considerations and partly because of the number of stakeholders. So, to help, here's a simple 10-step systematic process for formulating a content strategy.

By guiding the design of customer interactions, the principles of behavioral science offer a simple, low-cost route to improved customer satisfaction.

Ben Horowitz believes companies should strive to hire people with the right kind of ambition. Here he aims to clarify why you should care about senior managers having the right kind of ambition and give some tips on how to screen for them in an interview.

“Sleep on it” is common advice given to anyone facing a big decision. Yet research by Loran Nordgren shows you may want to stick with your first impression instead.