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12 Words: Deductive Reasoning

Sharp sales minds share their 12-word strategies for the 2009 selling season

Assembled by Paul Nolan

“There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together,” said Josh Billings.

You haven't heard of Billings? It was the pen name for one Henry Wheeler Shaw, who may have gone down as the most famous humor writer and lecturer in the United States in the second half of the 19th century had it not been for a popular satirist who had a pen name of his own -- Mark Twain.

Billings will never top the list of great 20th century satirists, but his endorsement of brevity is a timeless prescription. In fact, Americans are in love with the short and sweet, or, as a recent article in Time magazine called it, "micro-writing."

Whether it's because people feel compelled to keep their messages to a single BlackBerry screen, or simply are too rushed to say more than a sentence, we are becoming a nation of few words. From six-word memoirs to four-word film reviews, mini-lit is thriving.

It left us wondering how some sharp business minds would summarize a plan for approaching 2009 if we limited them to one dozen words. Clearly, you can say a lot when challenged to say only a little.

We decided to give Billings the first 12 words:

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