It's a beautiful day in Kirkland, and I'm driving around town this morning running errands. Then, like thousands of other drivers today, I had a positive, buzz-worthy experience with 24-Hour Fitness. And it cost them nothing.

If you're in business, you should know your elevator pitch. In a five-story elevator ride, how would you describe your business? How would you tell a prospective partner, customer or employee why your business is remarkable?

The concept of the elevator pitch is not new. But I hadn't really considered the elevator question until reading Tim Connor's great book, 91 Mistakes Smart Salespeople Make.

According to Tim, an elevator question is any question that cuts to the heart of your prospect's challenges, concerns or fears to make them think. It's a question that implies you or your organization may have a possible solution for their problems.

Of course, elevator questions are not confined to elevators. They can be used on the trade show floor, at the start of a phone conversation, even in voicemails.

Get right to the heart of what your customers care about, worry about, and are themselves paid to do. Imply with the question that you may have a solution. Then watch your prospects engage.

Thanks, Tim.

There's absolutely no chance your business can successfully operate in the same way today that it did five years ago. Too much has changed - customers, competitors, business conditions, technology, etc. The ingredients that made you successful five years ago have changed, disappeared, perhaps strengthened.

And yet change and innovation is one of the most complicated and challenging issues facing existing business. It's why start-ups can gain such incredible traction on entrenched market leaders, because they're starting from scratch with a new set or rules, assumptions and business practices that more directly map to current conditions.

Peter Drucker called this systematic abandonment, the deliberate process of letting go of familiar products in favor of the new or as yet unknown. He offered clients three key questions to focus their thinking on strategic abandonment:

• If you weren't in this business today, would you invest the resources to enter it?
• What unconscious assumptions might constrain your business practices and limit your innovative thinking?
• Are your highest-achieving people assigned to innovative opportunities? Or are they merely working on yesterday's problems and yesterday's products?

These are difficult questions to answer, and far more difficult to put into practice. But the hard questions, and even harder conversations, are key to innovation and growth.

Bashing your competitors is easy. It's also a very slippery slope.

The father of modern management will be teaching us new ways to innovate and improve our businesses for a long time, despite his passing earlier this year. Peter Drucker's insights and strategies have not only stood the test of time, but seem to get stronger and more relevant as things change and evolve.

• Who is your customer?
• What does your customer consider value?
• What are your results with customers?
• Does your customer strategy work well with your business strategy?

Most of us can reasonably get through the first question, but tying that customer identification to perceived value and expected, customer-centric results is where we often go astray.

If you haven't done so in awhile, apply these questions to your business. Make sure that both you and the rest of your management team knows, understands and believes the answers.

In our increasingly complex world, identifying your customer isn't as straightforward as many assume it to be.

Your customer, for example, may not actually use your product. They may not even really care about your product.

Let's assume for simplicity's sake that customers come in three categories:

1) the user
2) the buyer
3) the influencer

All three exist, in nearly every product and service available in the market today. But do you have a strategy for how to reach and mobilize each group? Do you know how to identify each customer individually?

This is all about relationships and leverage, and knowing your customers intimately. Getting to that level of insight, and knowing how to leverage the complex relationships your customers have amongst each other, is a critically important element of marketing strategy.

And if you haven't thought about it this way before, you might find that it immediately opens up new opportunities within your business for growth and market share.

Marketing plans are for suckers: Scott started with something complicated, then ended up with something brilliantly simple.

What has your intern taught you?: Make this summer's "seasonal help" a two-way street (like Pete did).

Eight steps to creating brand evangelists: Mack nailed it, and there are plenty of things on this list you can start to execute today!

Alignment: Seth gives two examples of creative sponsorship opportunities that quickly and immediately would pay dividends in brand awareness and perception. But would you have the guts to do it?

Guilt-Free Self Promotion: Promoting yourself is perfectly acceptable, if you do it right. Scott tells you how.

Retailing Best Practices: Check out these marketing and promotional ideas straight from the retail world. Could they apply to your business? Think outside of the box...

Making your customers feel special often doesn't take much. Sometimes, just two words will do it.

Like you, I have a thousand things to do every day. Work, family, errands, responsibilities.

They all need to get done. But too often, I do them the hard way. Much of the time, it's not really worth my time to do it that way.

There are things in my life that I now outsource. Things that may cost a little money to do so, but let me make far better use of my limited time.

For example, I have an older, diabetic cat. She needs special diabetic dry cat food, which is only available at one of two vet clinics in the area. In the past, to get a new bag of cat food, I've had to make a special trip to one of these clinics.

What if I could get that food, and not have to make the trip? Don't I have something better, more productive, more efficient to do with that 30-40 minutes?

I'm not talking about paying someone else to run that errand for me. There are far cheaper ways to get that bag of food than that. Instead of 40 minutes to get that food, I spent five:

• PetFoodDirect.com sells the food I need, at the same price as I get it from the vet clinic.
• My diabetic cat food requires a prescription, which I had faxed over from our vet.
• Five minutes later, I've ordered my cat food. It'll arrive at my doorstep in a few days

That's 30 minutes I have back - to spend more time with my family, squeeze in a quick workout, or crank out another quick project at work. It's my choice what I do with that time, but I guarantee it's better spent than sitting in my car (burning gas, sending more emissions into the atmosphere, etc.) And that cat food is one of several things I can automate to get more time back in my personal and professional life.

What's your time worth? What would you rather be doing?

12 Tips to Organize Your Desk: It'll look nicer, feel better, and help you stay focused.

Headlines are stop signs: They're not "buy" signs, as Copyblogger points out, so don't worry about making them work too hard. More great copywriting tips follow.

54 questions for entrepreneurs: Good list for product planners and business leaders as well. Thanks, Scott.

Why the iPhone will fail: Laura is absolutely right. Despite similar names, it's the anti-iPod.

Simple, brilliant customer evangelism: Started with a simple customer effort, then magnified by an even simpler company effort. Brilliant.

Don't do it: Why Marc Andreesson thinks starting your own business is a bad idea.