Compelling stories and mind-blowing statistics are swell and all, but if they’re buried in a white paper or lost in a post somewhere in your blog archives, who’s going to see it? Who’s going to share it? Who’s going to care?

One of the moments when a sales cycle can be tough for everyone is when you start getting to conversations about numbers. It can be any set of numbers — results data, sales numbers, project timelines, reference numbers or prices — especially prices. If one person in the conversation is unable to convey what the numbers mean, it can turn into a downward spiral of awkwardness.

Today, The Starr Conspiracy will be shutting its doors for half a day to prepare for the Fort Worth Addy Awards. Last year, our team took home an impressive ratio of awards to entries and this year, we went all in. I don't know if we ever actually announced how kick-ass our creative team is on the blog ... but rest assured, our Creative Director — Brandon A. — and his team of rockstar designers is up to absolutely no good. In 2013, I think you'll see a revolution of creative in the enterprise software business.