And the first question I usually ask is “how’s business?”.

Get to hear a lot of interesting stories, and — thanks to the connection I have with our ISBM members, an interesting perspective on the nature of business — and business-to-business in particular.

I invite all of you to share your views, insights, and perspective on the nature of the practice of business-to-business marketing — a curious mix of art, science, humor, courage, and education. I’ll be sharing news, questions, answers, and hopefully a variety of things you’ll find useful. If this works out, this blog can be a forum with the objective of providing fast answers to B-to-B questions, and generally improving the practice of business marketing.

And also, we’ll work to answer the question: “how’s business?”

How about right now?

Although this sounds lewd as I say it, a variety of answers I’ve been hearing were nicely summarized — no doubt with a smile — by one of our members who said:

“Well, I think we’re ‘feeling the shape of the bottom.’”

And that’s about it — things are no longer in freefall, but were trying to decide just how we’ll move through this recovery. Most folks have ruled out a “V” shape, and my current feeling is that we’ll see a definite upturn, with a light if a lot of jagged spikes, ups and downs as we go. Short-term perturbations on a longer-term gradual recovery, which should be clearly visible through the noise by the fourth quarter of 2009.

That’s my take — and I’m sticking to it.

Future posts will be much shorter, please jump in and help — and thanks to all of you who advance the practice of business marketing.