I like charts, graphs, and diagrams because they make sense. Sure, your can skew them all sorts of ways, and sometimes they can get a bit out of hand, but they make sense.

Arrow going up? Great! Series of bars getting shorter? Not so good. Easy.

But I have to admit that Venn diagrams don’t do a lot for me. You’ve got one thing, and another thing, and then in the middle you get this football shaped combination of things that have things.

Yep.

Still, Venns offer a certain graphic advantage that a line or bar graph can’t, like this cartoon that’s some sort of cutesy bear or mouse. Let’s see a pie chart do that!

From Small Business Trends

A Pie Chart Can’t Do This

It might be hard to read those little baskets on the desk, but they’re labeled “Frying Pan” and “Fire.”

I’d love to take more credit for this, but it’s based on an old co-worker’s desk. She had the traditional “In” and “Out” paper bins, but she also had one labeled “OMG!” where I’m assuming she kept items that needed to be dealt with more quickly.

I never asked her about it, but it always amused me when I’d walk by, so I decided to come up with my own take on it, and this cartoon is the result.

From Small Business Trends

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire

I’m not a sports guy. I’m sort of big and pretty tall, so coaches always assumed that I’d be a wonderful addition to whatever team they were assembling. I’d try to warm them, really I would, but they’d always chat me up, put me out there, and then shake their heads in bitter disappointment while I tripped over my own clownishly oversized feet.

Sigh. . .

But sports can be a big part of sales small talk, so I tried to keep up on who played what for whom and how. Mostly I just nodded and agreed.  But I had this one manager who was sports crazy. Any sport. I swear he followed curling. And he loved his sports analogies.

“We were batting 1000, but we’re in the big leagues now. It’s a whole new ballgame. You need to cover your bases and play hardball. Step up to the plate, swing for the fences, and really knock it out of the park!”

Honestly, it went on and on like this. . . So I did this cartoon in a meeting to amuse myself. I think it’s a home run.

(Rats! Now I’m doing it!)

From Small Business Trends

We’re In The Big Leagues Now

I’m constantly on the prowl for words, phrases, any snippet of language that I think I can play with. I think I heard this on the radio one day. Someone somewhere wasn’t happy about something and “declined to comment.”

Once something like that pops out at me, my head begins to run it through all sorts of cartoony filters. Can I use it with an animal? Can I reverse it? Exaggerate it? Does it sound like something else?

Obviously that last technique is what I used here. Change “declined” to “reclined,” back up just a bit to involve a big comfy chair, and you get this cartoon.

The cartoon itself is sort of medium funny, but what amuses me more is the idea of some executive putting his feet up, laying back a bit, maybe grabbing the remote, and then holding forth on the state of his business. That’s pretty funny.

From Small Business Trends

Declined . . Err, Reclined to Comment

Well it’s a new year, and I can’t think of a better way to start off than with a fresh sales graph cartoon!

I love coming up with different ways to play with a line or bar graph, and then sort of reverse engineering it to see what sort of a business or product it might fit. For example, with this cartoon I was playing with the idea that when the line hit the side of the graph that it might bounce back the other way.

So, after a few minutes of playing with some different choices (tennis balls, pogo sticks, etc…), those little rubber super bouncy balls came to mind and all of a sudden that line made perfect sense.

Any other company would look at this and run for the hills. But for the good people at Super Bouncy Ball, this is just what they’re looking for.

From Small Business Trends

Business As Usual

Flowcharts are fun. You’ve got all your little boxes and arrows and symbols and colors…fun!

This cartoon started out as a take on an overly complex flowchart that had symbols and lines here, there and everywhere, and it was okay, but it was when I put in one simple little box at the very top above it all that this cartoon finally made sense, and the caption came quickly after.

From Small Business Trends

Restructuring Over the Downturn

So I’m at the airport and for whatever reason my super-duper smartphone, which is apparently from the not-too-distant future, just will not find a signal.

Okay, no big deal, except that apparently everyone around me is busily typing away, being productive (or not), and enjoying some sort of WiFi that has shunned me and my poor little gadget.

What I wouldn’t have done for five minutes of good, strong WiFi. Would I have gone as far as the criminal in this cartoon? Probably not.

Err . . . probably.

From Small Business Trends

It’s A Stick-Up: Gimme Your Bandwidth!

I’ll admit I don’t know much about consulting. Only one of the companies I ever worked for ever hired one, and I’m sure they’re in general quite helpful, but not this one guy.

Every suggestion he made, I swear, was the most basic, self-evident, common-sense idea I’d ever heard.

“You know what would help? If sales could sell more.” You think?!

So the idea that a company would pay for the most basic assistance inspired this cartoon. Drawing anthropomorphic math symbols was just the icing on the cake.

From Small Business Trends

The Consultants Have Arrived

There was a woman at one of my old jobs who was in a constant state of war with her voicemail. She was sure that phone was somehow plotting against her. Losing messages, ignoring calls, garbling audio… If there was a way to have trouble with voicemail, she had it.

One day her voicemail stopped working altogether. No error message, no half-recorded calls–just nothing, and lots of it. She was beside herself.

I stopped by her desk and suggested that maybe her phone was just ignoring her, and this cartoon manifested itself.

I have no idea if she and the phone ever came to terms, but I’d like to think so.

From Small Business Trends

Is Your Voicemail Conspiring Against You?

Viral marketing is apparently the holy grail of advertising now. Post a video of something funny, awkward or hopefully both, and hope that you’re the next big Internet sensation.

Still, you’d think people in advertising would be able to craft a term a little more friendly than “viral.” It sounds like something that’s going to keep you on the couch with some chicken soup for a good week.

And it’s that observation that led to this cartoon.

From Small Business Trends

It’s Only a Case of Viral Marketing