Got clients? 25 unwritten rules, in writing.

1. Learn what it is their customers are trying to cure

2. Link your and their every activity to revenues

3. Adopt behavioral marketing models

4. Communicate, communicate and communicate - in both directions

5. Mentally try to plan a program that meets marketing goals at 1/5th the real budget - the exercise helps focus efforts on the nub of needs and appropriately de-emphasizes the frills

6. Avoid having meetings with more than two other people

7. Test your ideas - and if their target customers roll their eyes, tune out or otherwise say "who cares", start over.

8. If it's me-too, it isn't you

9. Never forget that in addition to every other product you have to bring to market, their brand is a product, too.

10. Doing things the way they've always been done invites stagnation.

11. Every market has a past parallel from which you can gain its street smarts without having to regain its bruises. Find that parallel and learn all you can about it.

12. Never appeal to just one side of the brain.

13. Most companies create their own hurdles between themselves and an interested prospective customer's incoming order - identify and remove those hurdles.

14. Understate.

15. Nobody hums the announcer. Music is more mnemonic.

16. If you can't state the theme in 3 words or less, try again.

17. Hire the best. Hordes of mediocrity cannot accomplish moments of greatness.

18. Identify and sway the gatekeepers.

19. Sex doesn't sell, but sexy does, because all purchasing behaviors are Freudian by nature (but recheck against #14).

20. Think of your efforts in terms of messages, routes and targets – mentally mix and match different combinations to see if there isn't some better blend.

21. Always remember that nobody owes you a reading.

22. Sell what's in inventory first.

23. Remember that your marketing efforts are also a product that you must market to your internal and external partners, without whom they are doomed.

24. Results are worth dollars, while reports on efforts are next to worthless.

25. Everyone you ever encounter will have a "better" idea and want to impose a thumbprint or signature on your efforts - resist.